Preservation Link Roundup 3/30/10

The Emergency Food Storage Pros explain why a food storage book is a great asset in properly storing enough food for your family in event of emergency (Using a Food Storage Book to Make a Food Storage List). While you may not be interested in storing enough food for your family for a year, the information you can gain from these sorts of books on how to stock and cook out of your pantry is very useful for nearly everyone.

Hot Water Bath takes a more improvisational approach to pantry-filling (Maintaining My Amateur Status).

It wouldn't do at all to set your heart on the peaches only to find out that, this year, you're more gifted in the hot pepper area. Better instead to focus on ideas - maybe you could use more jam or sandwich enhancers or fruits suitable for side dishes. Focusing on concepts allows you to bop and weave with your canning - you'll get your jam, but maybe it'll be blackberry instead of strawberry. Pickles might end up as green cherry tomatoes rather than hamburger dills. See what I mean? Bop and weave right around whatever the garden, the weather or your mood throws at the affair. For my part, I'm focusing on finished items rather than ingredients - salsas over plain tomatoes, brandied fruits over plain berries, for example, things I can use more or less as-is without further massaging after the jar is open.

I couldn't agree more in being flexible and open to possibility when canning.

Speaking of possibility, my friend and fellow Master Food Preserver Delilah Snell made a cameo appearance on an upcoming segment of Good Food, as part of a report on local foraging (New Friends, Old Friends and KCRW's Good Food??). The radio segment came about thanks to a foraging class and cooking demo held at Delilah's shop, the Road Less Traveled Store. There is another class coming on April 25th. Wouldn't some jam or jelly flavored with foraged herbs be perfect for this month's Can Jam? I'll let everyone know when I find out when the show will be broadcast.

Ithaca's Food Web reports on a very interesting sounding widget that allows food preservers to bulk order straight from farmers (New Web Widget Developed in Ithaca will Connect Local Farmers and Home Food Processors).

Harvestation will create an opportunity for farmers to link up with the growing home food processors market using web tools designed specifically for this task. Home food processors require bulk quantities of farm products in order to can, freeze, ferment, dehydrate, and root-cellar food. The harvestation widget will match produce growers and meat producers with food preservers and vice versa.

Sounds pretty darn interesting. This is a tool I'll be following closely.

Finally, some photos of the abundance at last week's Hollywood Farmers' Market:

Slate on Fresh Food - Doesn't Quite Get the Point, Again

Once again, Slate has an article that touches on food preservation (Not So Fresh). In this case, the point of the article is to defend preserved foods from the recent emphasis on fresh and local food.

Take a close look at the policy approaches listed above—farm-to-school programs, foodstamp discounts at green markets, and tax credits for grocery produce sections—each one is designed in large part to improve access to fresh produce. Not just any old produce, but fresh produce—unprocessed, uncooked, and untarnished by industrial machinery. School cafeterias already have frozen carrots and canned peaches. Our kids need fresh, fresh, fresh!

This strategy may seem unobjectionable. Why challenge this devotion to plants just tugged from the warm soil? A single-minded focus on fresh produce distracts us from the bigger problem: Our children are suffering from a lack of any fruits or vegetables whatsoever. Canned, frozen, dried, juiced—anything would help

Well, I agree that preserved foods shouldn't be dissed and should be an important part of our diet. Nevertheless, I understand the emphasis on fresh food.

Nutritionally, preserved foods can be as good as (in most cases) fresh foods and, occasionally, better. So, yeah, we don't need things to be fresh in order for them to be nutritious. Heck, I'm a promoter of (home) preserved foods.

But that isn't really the point of fresh and local. First, fresh usually means unprocessed, which means that real cooking must take place. Cooking is a real key to eating better and more healthy. Learning to cook is a key benefit of fresh. Sure, you can learn to cook with frozen and canned foods, but you learn more by starting from scratch. Once you've learned to cook from fresh, then you are much better equipped to incorporate some processed foods in your meal.

Second, wherever they sell even minimally processed foods, they also sell ultra-processed foods. One of the advantages of encouraging people to shop in farmers' markets is that it keeps them out of the supermarkets where the temptations of industrially processed foods are too great. You can't buy a frozen pizza in any of the farmers markets I've ever been to.

Even within a supermarket, more time and money spent in the produce section means less time and money spent on processed foods. Sure, some of minimally processed foods are a good deal, but too often they are also right next to the ultra-processed foods that, while inexpensive, are not so good from a nutrition point of view.

Third, while processed foods are more convenient, you can take that argument too far, and we have. After all, fast food is the ultimate in convenience and we've seen how well that has worked out. The emphasis on "food deserts" is an attempt to somewhat level the convenience playing field a bit. Fast food and heavily processed foods are conveniently available even in the poorest neighborhoods. Food that you actually have to cook - not so much. So not only does home cooking have an inherent inconvenience factor (you actually have to cook), but access is inconvenient as well.

Fourth, although preserved foods may lead to less wastage, sitting on a shelf for years isn't that great an improvement over the status quo. What is important is knowing how to stock a pantry (fresh and preserved) and how to cook out of one. If you know how to cook, then much less goes to waste. Most of my cooking is actually figuring out how to put what I've already got to use - bits and pieces of this and that, combined into soups, hashes, frittatas and other leftover classics. I am efficient at this because I know how to cook. So, it comes down to cooking again.

Fifth, fresh connects us closer to where our food comes from. Community gardens and farmers markets are excellent examples, but even simple, fresh produce ties us closer to the origins of our food than a can or a waxed frozen carton (not to mention ultra-processed foods). Although the author of the Slate article complains that we are confusing nutrition and culture, that is sort of the point. Preparing and eating food is, inevitably, a social act. Food is a huge part of our, of every, culture.

The more we rely on industrially processed foods, the more we undermine our connection to the social and cultural elements that kept human beings on a healthy diet for thousands of years. Frozen and canned food is less than 150 years old. Our social and cultural relations to food were built on fresh, not processed. Although processed foods have become part of our culture, we've gone a little bit overboard and an emphasis on fresh is a welcome corrective.

Sixth, and finally, as a promoter of home food preservation, you need to start with fresh in order to preserve in the home. So, let's bring preserved foods into the pantry, but let's also learn how to make them ourselves. I use plenty of commercially preserved foods in my cooking. But it is my cooking, and I know how to preserve many of the foods myself. Knowing how to preserve fresh, makes me more efficient at using the fresh as well as the preserved results.

So, yeah, I think that Michelle Obama should invite me (or any food preserver) into the White House Garden to demonstrate some old-school food preservation techniques. But that doesn't mean I think the emphasis on fresh is wrong.

You can go overboard with the emphasis on fresh, true, but the pendulum is a long way away from going to far in the other direction.

What the emphasis on fresh needs is an equal emphasis on cooking. I think it is sort of assumed sometimes, but it needs to be more explicit.

Preservation Link Roundup 3/16/10

Well, we've been hit with another, thankfully mild, earthquake this morning (Preliminary Earthquake Report: 4:04AM PDT: Pico Rivera, CA). Looks like the Whittier Narrows Fault is active again, which gave us so much trouble back in 1987. Lucky me, I live only a few miles away - on the Montebello side in 1987 and the Whittier side today.

I'm not going to go too much into earthquake preparedness. But food preservation is an important part of it. Not only do you have to worry about losing electricity (and, therefore, your freezer), but natural gas may also be unavailable (no cooking). Having precooked food you can eat out of the jar (beans, meat, soups) would be a good thing.

Chickens in the Road is giving away a copy of the Ball Blue Book Guide to Preserving and all you have to do is leave a comment on her post (read the whole thing for details) (Ball Blue Book Giveaway).

Putting By has a beautiful photo of their canning pantry as well as an inventory of what they have (or should have) in their stocks (Inventory :: March 1, 2010). Is there a specific word, perhaps German, for organization envy?

Another organization tool is the preserving journal. Susan Busler, an extension agent for Douglas County in Oregon, writes about pantry organization and how a preserving journal can help in the Douglas County News-Review (Extension Spotlight: Spring Cleaning Applies to Edibles as Well).

Churches are a good place to share information on food preservation. In Hurley, Mississippi a church is hosting a public class on food preservation (Can You Can? Homemaker's Lost Art Finds a New Audience in Hurley Church).

Debra Dickson, women's ministry director at Full Life Assembly of God in Hurley, decided to arrange educational courses for members of her church.

When she polled church members to see what subjects interested them, canning was a popular choice.

As a result, Full Life has partnered with the George County Cooperative Extension Service to offer a class called "Getting Ready to Can."

What church or other organization do you belong to? Perhaps you can get your local county extension to have a Master Food Preserver do a food preservation demo or class.

They probably don't need extension agents in Sweden:

The peoples of Scandinavia are masters of food preservation – techniques won through difficult and hard winters in which many bellies went hungry. From necessity and practicality, a heritage of cultured, naturally fermented foods was born. They bring us gravlax, pickled herring, cheeses and sourdough breads, inlagda rödbetor (a type of pickled beet) and, of course, a wide variety of yogurts such as viili, piimä, filmjölk and skyr.

Ah, Swedish cultured milks. Nourished Kitchen breaks down the universe of Swedish fermented dairy products, keeping you from confusing your viili with your skyr (Sour Milk: Lessons from Scandinavia). If you're ready to jump into the world of Swedish cultured milks, there is a culture giveaway as well (Giveaway: Win a Scandinavian Yogurt Starter (and How to Make Raw Milk Yogurt)).

Food in Jars disdained jelly for some time, but is rediscovering how wonderful they can be (Orange Jelly Recipe). That's wonderful because, for me, jellies are elegant in the way they can express color and flavor. There is a purity to their shimmering texture that is both old-fashioned in its composition and fresh and new in its flavor. A great thing is that you can pretty much make a jelly out of anything that can be used for an infusion. Herbal jellies (tarragon or basil definitely bring something special to the plate), tea jellies can be incredibly varied, and wine jellies can be amazing; your imagination is the only limit. This past weekend, I served thumbprint cookies with a hibiscus (jamaica) jelly.

And, as FiJ notes, fruit juices combined with other flavors creates an exponential number of options.

Speaking of jelly, The Kitchn wants to know what to do with mint jelly, other than serving it with lamb (What Can I Do With Leftover Mint Jelly?). There are some good suggestions in the comments, but it really is just about using your imagination. One very simple option: stir it into your hot tea. Similarly, you might consider adding it to a soup or curry. Or, when watermelon comes into season, cube the melon, melt some of the jelly, toss, chill and serve for dessert.

In other jelly related news, Scrumper is planning to make more scrumped Cornelian Cherry Jelly this summer (Scrumped Cornelian Cherry Jelly).

March Can Jam update:

Big Black Dogs uses onion in her pepper jelly - sounds good to me (Basil Banana Pepper Jelly *** The Hot Stuff!). And her onion jelly sounds pretty good too. I guess this is just jelly day on PreserveNation.

Bread Experience found a recipe for an onion relish that the recipe author suggested would be good on pizza. So, not only did she make the relish, she made the pizza too (Caramelized Red Onion Relish and Pizza: Tigress Can Jam).

Preservation Link Roundup 3/6/10

Stony Run Farm provides some very simple instructions for making a solar dehydrator from scraps (An Afternoon in the Garage). It requires a little woodshop skill, an old window and some wood scraps but not that much. If you check around the interwebs, you can find a number of different ways of making solar dehydrators. Just be careful that in our summer sun and heat your dehydrator isn't actually an oven.
via Two Frog Home

The Atlantic's Food Channel has some good suggestions for pantry staples that, when you need to cook out of your pantry, make life a good deal easier (A Southern Pantry for Stress-Free Meals).

The LA Weekly's Squid Ink keeps us up-to-date on seasonal produce, this week highlighting that most delicious of thistles, the artichoke (What's in Season at the Farmers Markets: Artichokes). There is some nice history and a brief discussion of the various varieties.

Artichokes can be pickled. The best artichokes for pickling are the small "baby" artichokes that you can eat whole, usually they are cut in half for pickling, pretty easy. You can pickle just the hearts, but trimming artichokes down to the heart is an awful lot of effort.

For more on what's fresh in the markets, check out Good Food every week (What's Fresh at the Farmers Market This Week). That rhubarb looks darn good.

Wisteria - Wisteria - Wisteria
It's that time of year again! Sierra Madre is hosting their annual wisteria festival Sunday, March 14th (2010 Sierra Madre Wisteria Festival). The Huntington Library also has some fine wisteria as well. The food preservation take? Wisteria makes a fine, delicately floral scented jelly. The violet color is lovely as well. CAUTION: Only the violet wisteria flowers are edible. Not the leaves, vines, roots, and ESPECIALLY not the seeds.

LampGoods' shop on Etsy has a cool looking hanging lamp made from a vintage Mason jar (Orono. Vintage BALL CANNING Jar PENDANT made NEW).

What is it with fermented cabbage and soups? Why do they work so well? Serious Eats publishes a Momfuku recipe for kimchi stew (The Momofuku Cookbook's Kimchi Stew with Rice Cakes).

All Types of Cooking, and a Whole Lot of Canning Here! always keeps a supply of home canned tuna on hand. She shares her technique and some good photos (Canning Tuna). I haven't canned tuna myself, but I definitely have it on my list of things I want to can.

I doubt canned tuna is the recipe Creative Canning is excited about canning when her new All American canner arrives soon (All American Canner). But she's right to be excited. The All American is, IMHO, the best pressure canner out there.

Nutrition Know How has a good list of things to do in order to get ready for canning season (Gear Up for Canning Season).

And, last but not least I take the time to go through my canned items. I check for any change in the canned items, and when the item was processed. I try to use all the items canned from the previous year before my next season starts. So if I have items that I have not used from the previous year, I know that I need to plan some menu’s that will include those canned goods before I start canning again.

Finally, it is a bit late in the season, but Slow Food USA has declared 2010 the year of the heirloom apple (Let 2010 be the Year of the Heirloom Apple). So, later this year, let's all can some heirloom varietal apple products. We might find that some of these heirlooms, which aren't great for out of hand eating, are very well-suited to particular canning recipes.

Preservation Link Roundup 3/3/10

Doris and Jilly Cook experiment with and discuss using commercial-style jars with 1-piece lids (Jars and Lids). There are pros and cons, but you may consider using them if you plan on selling your jars or give them as gifts.

The LA Times' Daily Dish points out a couple of local tomato growing classes starting up this weekend (Tomato Time: As Tomato Season Approaches, a Variety of Growing Classes are on Offer). Growing your own is an excellent skill to learn and a great way to ensure a plentiful amount of tomatoes for canning.

Speaking of tomatoes, the Horticulture Department of Fullerton College is holding its annual tomato and pepper plant sale this weekend (Friday - Sunday) (2010 Tomato and Pepper Sale). Learn how to grow them and then buy them this weekend.

Residents of Richmond and Wayne counties in Indiana are enjoying a series of 100-mile potluck dinners, in which all the dishes are prepared with local ingredients gathered within a 100-mile radius, according to the Palladium-Item (Interest Grows in Locally Produced Food). Given that "it's been months since the last farmer's market", preserved food plays a big role in the local ingredient list.

Much of the food at the February 100-mile radius potluck came from the Baxters' CSA, The Clear Creek Food Co-op or home gardens. Families froze or canned produce during the summer so they could have some in the winter.

At the potluck, Earlham professor Carol Hunter informally demonstrated how she cans her own fruits and vegetables. Hunter learned the skill from her mother, who was a home economics teacher, but noted that the skill is largely being forgotten.

Angela Fraser, an Associate Professor/Food Safety Education Specialist in the Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition at Clemson University has written a brief 20-page introduction to home food preservation (Introduction to Home Food Preservation). It is a great quick overview of the topic.

The cover story for the New York Times Dining section this week is on raising and harvesting rabbits (Don't Tell the Kids). Raising rabbits is not too difficult and can be quite economical, since they breed, like, well, you know. By coincidence (?), Food Curated (an excellent short documentary series on various producers of food on the East Coast) just posted an episode on rabbit breeding (Farming and Breeding Fresh Local Rabbits for New York City Restaurants).

Why all the rabbit love on a food preservation blog? Rabbits are excellent for pressure canning (Selecting, Preparing and Canning Meat: Rabbit or Chicken). It was one of the specialties of my great-grandmother.

Anarchy in a Jar uses their jam to make a free-form tart, or crostata (How to Jam #3: Jam Crostata). I find that these are really great for individual sized servings, i.e., making a whole bunch of mini-crostatas. For larger tarts, I prefer a traditional shell made in a tart pan. Still, a large crostata is a beautiful thing. Both pie fillings and conserves are also an excellent filling for a crostata. And for real decadence, why not have a bottom layer of ricotta cheese topped with jam in the crostata?

Might I also suggest brushing the top of the crostata with an egg wash to make it all nice and shiny when it comes out of the oven? Powdered sugar is a nice topping, but a crystallized sugar, like turbinado, sprinkled on top before baking also makes a lovely topping and adds texture.

Big Black Dogs is giving away an Nesco/American Harvest dehydrator (Nesco/American Harvest Dehydrator Giveaway). All you have to do is comment on the blog post. There are also a number of ways to get more entries, such as tweeting a link, following the RSS, etc., etc., etc.

Whether you win the dehydrator or not, you may want to consider reading this brief primer on dehydration from Positively Prepared (Why Dehydrate Food?). Probably the earliest food preservation method, dehydration is not used nearly as much as it can be.

Two Frog Home continues their pantry series with a few hints on using the food in your pantry (Pantry Stocking :: Using It).

Paris-based pastry and ice cream expert David Lebovitz makes an unusual marmalade (Bergamot Marmalade Recipe). Kevin West had some trouble using bergamots as a small part of a more traditional marmalade. I wonder what he would think of this recipe? Will he give it a try?

Preservation Link Roundup 2/26/10

Small Measure has announced the ingredient for March's Can Jam (March Can Jam: Alliums!).

From tender, green scallions, chives, scapes, ramps, and leeks to papery, husky onions, shallots, and garlic, the Allium family is the vegetable world equivalent of the guest who shows up at 6:50 p.m. for the cocktail party that begins at 7:00-by showing up early and as motivated as possible, they get the party started. Alliums are ready for the good times to begin again.

As noted in the announcement, be sure to use a tested recipe or properly acidify your alliums for water bath canning as they aren't acidic enough on their own.

Kevin West discovers the awe-inducing fragrant properties of bergamot a little too late (Bergamot: What Not To Do).

While cutting the fruit, I got an inkling of its strength and added only one of the two [bergamots to six pounds of oranges]. But after the heat of cooking unleashed its full fury, even that one fruit proved to be 99 parts too much. Its intensity burned the lips, and its smell—so alluring in the infinite dilution of eau de cologne—caused me the same panicky, suffocating feeling as do certain industrial cleaning products.

Read the whole thing.

The Paupered Chef hates vodka. It isn't my favorite, but the Paupered Chef despises it. So, when he ended up stuck with a partial bottle of the stuff, he turned it into an infused, or compound gin (Homemade Compound Gin (No Bathtub Required)). The results aren't the equivalent of a high-quality distilled gin, but good enough that the vodka-hating chef may actually buy some vodka just to make more homemade gin. Might I also suggest making some homemade aquavit as well?

Of course, this is only for home use. Unfortunately, according to Grubstreet San Francisco, the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control is cracking down on housemade infused spirits - tarragon-infused vodka one of the victims (Bars Running Scared as Alcohol Board Cracks Down on Infused Booze). Apparently, the law was meant to prevent bars from increasing the alcohol content of distilled spirits, but is now being interpreted, broadly, to prohibit altering the spirits in any way. Heaven forbid bars make good, interesting drinks.

Anarchy in a Jar alters a blood orange marmalade recipe they posted last year - removing the meyer lemons, since they were overwhelmed by the flavor of the blood oranges (Blood Oranges Zest My World).

Put a Lid on It makes a "real jam" for her honey with strawberries from the market. I'll note that last week was the first time since last season that the strawberries at the market started tasting like strawberries again, instead of pretty, but tart and fairly flavorless berries. Still, being a chef and all, there has to be a twist, and PaLoI turns to a chef's not-so-secret helper, Culinary Artistry. Everyone should have this book. It is an encyclopedia of flavor pairings. Look up an ingredient and the book will let you know what flavors go well with it. From this, PaLoI gets the idea of pairing the strawberries with balsamic vinegar (Strawberry Balsamic Jam).

The sequel, The Flavor Bible, is also a must have. When you want to change up a jam with an additional flavor, consult one (or both) of these books for some flavor ideas. I also use these books to cook from the pantry. When I have an ingredient and I'm not sure what to do with it, I look it up in one of these books and I am usually inspired to make something with it.

The New York Times continues coverage of the tomato bribery scandal - and the details keep getting worse (Bribes Let Tomato Vendor Sell Tainted Food):

In addition, prosecutors say that for years, SK Foods shipped its customers millions of pounds of bulk tomato paste and puree that fell short of basic quality standards — with falsified documentation to mask the problems. Often that meant mold counts so high the sale should have been prohibited under federal law; at other times it involved breaching specifications in the sales contracts, such as acidity levels or the age of the product.

The scope of the tainted shipments was much broader than the bribery scheme, touching more than 55 companies. In some cases, companies detected problems and sent the products back — but in many cases, according to prosecutors, they did not, and the tainted ingredients wound up in food sold to consumers.

The prosecutors say the product wasn't a health risk, but read the whole article. Seriously, read the whole thing.

Preservation Link Roundup 2/25/10

Well Preserved is on a yogurt kick. Last week they drained regular yogurt to make Greek-style yogurt and yesterday they discussed making yogurt in their dehydrator (Making Yogurt in the Dehydrator – the Night Time Stood Still).

I have the best yogurt maker in the world, the Salton YM9 - 1 Quart Yogurt Maker. Unfortunately, it is no longer manufactured - sorry. It is great for making 1 quart of yogurt at a time, usually enough for 3-5 days for me. But when I need to make more yogurt all at once, I turn to my dehydrator.

Well Preserved doesn't mention what sort of dehydrator they have, but almost certainly it is a box type, such as an Excalibur. The Ronco-style round tray dehydrators can be used to make yogurt, but in small tubs, not in large quart mason jars. In a box dehydrator, you just remove enough trays to fit the jars you want and then place them on the bottom. I like pint and quart jars for yogurt, but you could make a whole passel of 8-oz or 4-oz jars if you like pre-divided individual servings. Set to about 115 degrees F, the dehydrator will keep the yogurt at the right temperature for growth.

Ah, dehydrators. So useful. Bonus, after making yogurt with your dehydrator, you can make yogurt leather. Mix 2 parts yogurt to 1 part of your favorite jam, spread 1/4-inch thick on a leather drying sheet (offset spatula, thank you), 130 degrees until leather consistency, pliable, but not sticky. Cut into bite size pieces, my nieces call it "candy" - heh, heh.

Two Frog Home has been doing a great series on stocking your pantry (Pantry Stocking :: Buying in Bulk and Pantry Stocking :: Finding Space). Good tips.

Of course, while taking care of your pantry don't forget the refrigerator (the mainstay of food preservation). The Wall Street Journal has an interesting article on how appliance manufacturers are redesigning their refrigerators so that they are easier to clean and keep organized (Why Won't Anyone Clean Me?). The most important issue, actually, is education - teaching people how to properly store goods in their refrigerator.

People often don't store things properly anyway. Four years ago, in an effort to understand how people organize their fridges, Sub-Zero bought a week's worth of groceries and asked a group of 12 customers to put away the items in refrigerators at the company's research facilities in Madison, Wis.

What ensued was chaos. People put meat and soda cans in the crisper drawers, which have a temperature and humidity meant for veggies. They put their milk in shelves on the door. While the door shelves seem to be a perfect fit for a carton of milk, Sub-Zero says the area is the worst place to store dairy products because it's the warmest part of the fridge.

Read the whole thing. I like this tip:

Ms. Johnson [training manager at Merry Maids] recommends that people explore the depths of their fridges once a week for food that needs to be tossed. She suggests cleaning one shelf at a time so that the task is less overwhelming.

Flying Tomato Farms does something interesting when making homemade bouillon - they roast their vegetables first (Eureka! Homemade Bouillon). Sounds like a real good idea to me. Freeze in a jar or as cubes.

The Foodinista makes a variation on an old-school classic (Baked Brie with Apricot-Rosemary Chutney). If you already have some canned chutney handy, this is ridiculously quick and easy to make. You just need some puff pastry or phyllo, a wheel of brie, 10 mintues of prep, a little oven time and you've got something spectacular when entertaining.

Eleanor Barkhorn of The Atlantic's Food Section cooks from her pantry, where she finds a can of Tuscan white beans and garbanzo beans (After Snowpocalypse, Bean Soup). The bean soup she created was simple and easy and sounds decidedly satisfying. Convenience food from the pantry made with canned beans ... hm, sounds familiar. The only thing is that the soup contains cream and she froze it. Soups with cream that are frozen have a tendency to separate. Better to freeze the soup without cream and add the cream when reheating.

Delilah Snell loves the look of Weck canning jars (Must...Have...These...Jars). If you buy her a case, she promises to give you one back filled with something delicious. Rufus and Clementine also like the jars and have put together a little guide to getting some (In Pursuit of | A Weck Resource Guide). Be sure to use new rubber gaskets when canning, do no reuse gaskets.

The Herald Journal News of Utah publishes an article celebrating eating home canned food in the middle of winter (Home Canner Glory).

Home-canners, this is your moment of glory.

Now is the payback for the weeks of hard labor - hours spent up to your elbows in tomato pulp and peach skins. The foolhardy folks who scoffed at your industry can only dream of the rich fruit of the summer. They’ll ingest the counterfeit meat product and fried starch at fast food restaurants while you dine on colorful bottled treasures from your cellar, one luscious quart at a time.

Heh. There are a few recipes for using home canned goods as well.

Nurse Elizabeth also celebrates her canned bounty (Canned Poached Pears).

Tonite, in the dead of winter, I ate a perfect October pear, frozen in time. YUM. You can’t even get that at Whole Foods right now!

And to me, Canned Poached Pears is, to date, the most awesome thing I have ever made in my kitchen. Not because of the taste, though. Don’t get me wrong, it is a delicious, savory dessert. But the idea that I am preserving fruit when it is just perfect, then poaching it while it is already sealed in the jars (preserving the alcohol content-YES!), then cracking a jar open for an elaborate, special occasion dessert 6 months to 2 years after I made it is, to me, nothing short of awesome.

They have citrus up in Canada? Who knew? The Toronto Sun has three recipes for marmalade, plus good tips for making and canning it (Making Marmalade).

Preservation Link Roundup 2/19/10

First, a Can Jam update:

Tigress in a Jam had a difficult time finding local carrots for her Can Jam (California carrots were available, natch), so she decided to add a local ingredient to make a Carrot-Apple Butter (w/ Cardamom). Later, however, she did get some local carrots and match them with some ingredients from her freezer (a good way to do things) for Carrot-Rhubarb Jam (w/ Rosemary) (Carrots: Buttered & Jammed). Using ingredients from the freezer is a great way to match flavors out of season.

Well Preserved make a better carrot cake jam and a great way to use it: over a campfire between two pieces of bread in a pie iron (Can Jam - Carrot Cake Campfire Toast Pie).

Delicious Potager - love the name! - unfortunately used up the last of her own garden's carrots just before the ingredient for this month's Can Jam was announced (Tigress' Can Jam: Classic Pickled Carrots). Hers was a basic recipe, but she'll have some experience for her next crop.

Kevin West was on a shopping spree for rare citrus at the Wednesday Santa Monica Farmers' Market and discusses his finds (Rare Citrus: Bergamots, Kaffir Limes, Seville Oranges). For more information, you should know that Southern California is home to one of the greatest citrus research collections in the world: the University of California Riverside
Citrus Variety Collection. And if you want a great day trip to see over 70 varieties of citrus, be sure to visit California Citrus State Historic Park - in Riverside, of course. Definitely worth a trip, especially now, during peak citrus season.

Two Frog Home has a good piece on how you can stock your pantry with home preserved foods (Pantry Stocking :: Food Preservation). The article is short, but it is a good look at how one family approaches food preservation.

I'm so envious. Chickens in the Road received a gift from a reader: a collection of vintage canning books and catalogs (Treasure Trove). If you like vintage canning jars and recipe books, you definitely have to check out her photo-rich post.

Last summer, Cold Cereal & Toast canned some summer peaches from their CSA share. Now, in February, they are using local peaches to bake some delicious-sounding muffins (Channeling Summer: Peach Muffins).

Preservation Link Roundup 2/17/10

More carrots? Absolutely. Plan on seeing more carrots in this space for the rest of the month ... thanks to the Carrot Can Jam for the month of February.

All Types of Cooking, and a Whole Lot of Canning Here! makes carrot pickles (Carrot Pickles). She uses the cold pack method, in which you place the vegetables in the jar cold and pour boiling brine over them. It's easy, and allows you to make pretty jars, with the vegetables artfully arranged. One note: when cutting the vegetables to fit the jar, don't forget to take into account the headspace. I usually cut one stick to the proper length and use that as a measuring stick for the rest of my carrots (or asparagus, green beans, etc.).

Big Black Dogs solves the cutting the vegetable issue by using those "baby carrots" you buy in bags at the supermarket (Pickled Carrots). I say "baby carrots" in quotes because they are actually mature carrots industrially processed into the convenient "baby" shape. Still, they make a great pickle. From Big Black Dogs' photos, it looks like they fit the 4oz jars pretty darn well.

This isn't for the Can Jam, but Well Preserved dehydrated some orange taproots and was quite happy with the results (Dehydrated Onions and Carrots). You know, if it wasn't such an old method of preserving food, quite possible the oldest, dehydrated foods would probably be a fashionable example of molecular gastronomy. The textural changes can be a fantastic opportunity for using familiar ingredients in new ways. Why not try using those dried onions in a breading, for example?

Now for something non-carrot related.

It is lucky that I have access to as many kumquats as I can use because good kumquat recipes keep coming down the pike. Case in point, Tigress in a Pickle's Indian-style fermented kumquat pickle (Rajisthani Kumquat Pickle).

Barefoot Gypsy Blog is quite frugal. She buys partially used candles at yard sales and then melts them together into new candles. She was torn about using canning jars for her recycled candles, but decided they looked so good that it was okay to use them for candles instead of food (Recycled Candles in Canning Jars). The instructions are quite good.

Re-Nest has some handy advice for buying and storing bulk foods (How to Buy and Store Bulk Foods). I knew how to store bulk foods, but I definitely learned some things about buying them. Good, helpful tips.

Preservation Link Roundup 2/16/10

The LA Weekly's Squid Ink updates on what's fresh in the local farmers' markets (What's in Season at the Farmers Markets: Chamomile Gets a Boost from the Rains). Chamomile ... what a wonderful flavoring for certain jams and jellies. It has a particular affinity for citrus, especially lemons. Lemon-Chamomile marmalade, anyone?

Cooking Issues, the tech/food blog from the French Culinary Institute, has been experimenting with making stocks using a pressure canner (All-American, natch!) and goes into detail about the results (Pressure Cooked Stock 2: Changing Pressures, Playing with Chemistry). Conclusion: pressure-canned stock is the winner, but you need to use a non-venting lid. Guess I'll have to look into getting a non-venting lid for my canner - which would make it a sterilizer, not a canner - but great for making stock - then I switch lids, and can the stock.

Mother's Kitchen cans a classic and integral part of bánh mì sandwiches (Vietnamese Carrots and Daikon Pickle). This do chua is great on its own, but having some around for last minute sandwich making is a good thing. Bonus, though she is in Michigan, the carrots and daikon were from California.

Of course carrot slaws aren't only good on Vietnamese sandwiches. Put a Lid on It is canning a carrot and onion slaw for, presumably, Western-style sandwiches (Carrots and Onion Sandwich Slaw).

Nina Corbett has a recipe I can use with the basket of kumquats sitting on my kitchen counter right now (Kumquats in Honey Ginger Syrup). I've already made and canned some syrup and marmalade last week, but slicing all those kumquats into rings is very time consuming. Nina's recipe sounds much quicker and easier. I might cut the kumquats in half and seed them for easier eating later (and serving to friends and family). I also might add a little bit of an orange liqueur or, perhaps, some brandy.

Kevin West waxes rhapsodic about citrus culture and geography in suburban Southern California and adopts a free tree from Fallen Fruit (The Great Fruit Tree Giveaway).

Planting a tree is always an optimistic act, and planting a fruit tree is doubly so: you assume that you'll be around to enjoy the literal fruits of your effort. Planting my two Meyer lemon trees in California was something more, though, and more specific. It was a kind of declaration: about starting over, about setting down roots for a new future—about staking my claim on the California Dream.

Dream on Kevin!

Farm to Table is really excited about the wonderful beets now in market, providing some nutritional information as well as a brief history of this important vegetable (Beet Envy). They also have a recipe for beet pickles. Most pickled beets are quick pickles, made with a brine of vinegar, sugar and salt. F2T's recipe is for another type of beet pickle, fermented!

F2T discusses using Mason canning jars for the fermentation. One thing you might consider when using a Mason jar for fermentation is to put the flat lid on upside down, with the silicon ring up and screwing it on loosely. This will help ensure there isn't an airtight seal by accident, for example, by temperature variations creating a loose seal.

Well Preserved's Cheap Tuesday Gourmet discusses how home food preservation can improve both flavor and economy, whether freezing roasted red peppers or canning beans (Cheap Tuesday Gourmet – Calling All Food Preservers).

From now on we will also price all of our preserving posts (based on ingredients). Not all of our preserves will be considered cheap (wild blueberries with maple syrup is an adorable jam but not for the most cost conscious), but I want to help get the message out that preserving can help make a significant difference – in the amount of food that rots, the cost of what you eat and the quality and taste of what appears on your plate.

Pricing preserves is a great idea. I'll have to incorporate that in my journals and jars sometimes.