Giveaway: Gloria Nicol's preserving book & Ball's vintage edition jars
Spring is here, for many of us (sorry snowy midwest!), which means fruit is on its way. I’m excited to offer up a preserving book from an e-friend in the UK, Gloria Nicol, whose lovely blog I’ve tracked for some time now. When browsing in a local shop for resources supporting my kitchen book research, I came across her book:
;)
And absolutely fell in love with the simplicity and style of her recipes.
They’re fruit-forward and elegant; I think this is another great book to have when considering what delicious end your strawberries or [insert fruit/veg] might face. Thanks to CICO Books, and her publisher’s US office, I have a copy to send you!
As a bonus, courtesy of our friends over at Ball, I’m also able to toss in a flat of their newly-released Heritage Collection jars. They’re blue, like the old quart jars I’ve been collecting from every antique shop I run across. These limited-edition jars come six to a case and match year-appropriate writing for the 100-year anniversary of Ball “perfect mason” jars. Read more about them here.
Ball also announced that their lids no longer contain BPA in the sealing rubber effective last fall. New packaging is rolling out this spring indicating the omission of the toxic plasticizer. Good news for us!
Back to the book and considerations for what you’re going to put in your brand new, not-chipped, old-timey jars.
Reading Gloria’s book is like going on a trip overseas and visiting your cool aunt. She takes you to the market (you probably ride cute, old bikes), she feeds you scones and lets you taste a bite from all the jars from the pantry.
Here are a few highlights from the book, which features lovely photography and a blend of unique and classic flavor ideas.
I made her strawberry jam last weekend with our stash of berries and it was a vibrant and dazzling spread.
I love the nectars section!
Yes, she’s in the UK, where preserving practices differ from our USDA-prescribed methods, but you need not worry about safety. Either reduce the recipe and stash your jars in the fridge, or (ever so blasphemously) just process the jams or chutneys according to waterbath times listed for other US-published recipes of the same fruit jam. (Pretty much any jam gets a 10-minute processing time…)
For shipping reasons, we’re asking for entrants from the US & Canada only. Sorry international loves. Please enter by Friday, April 5, 2013 at midnight CST by leaving a comment below telling me about traditions, anything large or small that you’re continuing or bringing back with your family or within your friend circle. Good luck! (p.s. if you don’t leave your email address in the little box where the comment form asks for it, you won’t win because I can’t track you down otherwise)
Kate
Congrats to Kymm, lucky number 117; please check your email. Thanks everyone for entering and sharing such wonderful comments about traditions.
Canning, Cookbooks, Food Preservation, Fruit, Giveaways, Pickling, Traditions, Vegetables
Reader Comments (224)
These remind me of canning with my now 87-year old mother. (She still tends her own garden and cans tomatoes and peppers every year.) I love canning so much that I made my own apple butter, applesauce and pear nectar while in college and afterward and now I'm going to teach my daughter how to can from her urban garden in the Twin Cities.
There hasn't been a home canner in my family since my great-great aunt Katie (who, alas, got rid of all her jars when I was a small child), so there's a huge discontinuity. One "tradition" that I've been helping to preserve is my great grandmother's lemon-twist cookies. I've been making home-infused versions of the extracts and booze that goes in the batter, pre-mixing it and distributing it to other family members who still use the recipe so that instead of a whole lot of tsps and Tbsps its 1/4 cup of my mix.
A new tradition I've started is using homemade preserves on the cheese tray for Christmas Eve, which sits out throughout our extended family gift exchange. It's been a big hit three years running and I get requests to bring back specific items. Since we're Italian (including cousins from Italy who travel to be with us), I bring an Italian-style liqueur for sipping or adding to coffee. My grandmother loves the limoncello made from Meyer lemons from my sister's tree, and this past year our cousin Elenora from Bologna taught us to make "cafe correcto" by putting my honey anisette into the after dinner coffee.
We're still covered in feet of snow here but that doesn't mean a little jam making couldn't happen. I started making traditional German food with my mother a couple of years ago. She hadn't learned these traditions from her mother so we're learning together!
Something that I have made sure to keep as a tradition is birthday cakes that are homemade. I know that sounds so simple, but so many people these days buy birthday cakes, and even though the sweetness might taste good, it is not the same. My children are 6 and 2, and I have been married for 7 years, and none of us have had a store bought cake yet. Even for the birthday parties, I am more than happy to make 2-3 dozen cupcakes or a couple of sheet cakes to feed everyone. :)
We've been expanding our garden every year and I'm hoping that we'll have enough to can this year, just like my grandma used to. In past years we've just eaten all our produce, but my fingers are crossed that we can start canning soon!
I started canning last year, and it was so satisfying to pack away a bunch of canned tomatoes last fall. I remember my mother canniing tomatoes when I was younger. It's nice to bring this tradition back to my family.
There's Brazilian on my mother's side of the family, so learning how to make a good feijoada has always been important to me. I'd like to get back into the tradition of doing a yearly feijoada dinner party in the winter as a way to chase out the cold.
My family has some very strong Christmas cookie traditions - worthy of heated debates! (Would Auntie have used salted or unsalted butter? I think Auntie made them this size...)
I'm bringing back Sunday dinner! But with my extended group of friends that are my in town "family." Lovely jars, would be so fun to try out some new jams just in time for spring/summer fruit season!
My grandparents and parents always had the entire backyard plowed up as a vegitable garden and my mother canned or froze everything. I loved it so much, but always thought it was too much work. Now I am getting ready to retire and am starting it all back up again. My husband needed extra execise when we found out that he had cancer, but was not about to go to a gym. I thought what better than exercise in a garden and get all the fresh produce too, plus we are doing something together. We are both loving it. I've started canning with green beans and am now ready to branch out and get brave.
Every spring my friend and i go berry picking and then spend the rest of the weekend putting up jams and making pies. In doing so, she carries on what she learned from her mom, and i am reaching back to my great-grandmothers, because my mom and hers were not very kitchen oriented. Those blue jars are gorgeous!
Oh how I wish this weren't random- I need these jars! Anyway, according to my mother, my grandmother was a crazy preserving fool, just like I am, so I'm keeping up family tradition with all my pickles and jams and such.
I make strawberry jam every Spring -- which means I take my daughter out to pick strawberries at a local farm too. This link to the land is a tradition I hope to pass on to my daughter and future generations.
My husband and I have been making our own dough and and using seasonal ingredients (and even sometimes homemade cheese!) for our own pizza every Friday night for nearly 3 years. It's easily the best night of the week and our own special tradition. With spring not yet in sight here in the mountain west, we've been dipping into a lot of canned and frozen items for toppings.
A tradition we keep alive with my family and that I've spread to my friends is the weekly Party Night. Participants pick a movie and settle down as a group to watch on Friday or Sunday night.
Family Party Night usually involves popcorn and sodas and action flicks. The friendly twist practiced with my college roommate and friends involved homemade popcorn, bottles of hard cider, nail polish, clay masks, and Jane Austen movies.
Strawberry jam, grown in the patch at my parent's place. Every summer there are so many strawberries!!
my mother in law taught me how to can food a few years ago (and she learned from her mother and mother in law), and now I can't remember how we lived without our larder full of jams, pickles, salsas and tomatoes. this year we're also trying our hand at a small garden (until now, all of our produce came from our CSA and the farmer's market), and having a family garden is also a tradition of my husband's family.
i'm not sure if this is a tradition (yet) but i have a lot of fruit trees and each year my friends and family come to make fruit wines. last year we also made a fabulous hard cider from 3 different types of apples plus a beautiful crabapple - this was so delicious, for sure it will become a tradition!
i also make preserves with the fruit, would love to win the book and jars!
I'm keeping up the tradition of jam making and home canning :)
Oh, yay! I keep meaning to pick up Gloria's book, but keep wanting to find it in a brick-and-mortar shop. No such luck. And those blue Balls! Dreamy. :)
I love giving fruit preserves as gifts - It's such a unique host/hostess treat. I am looking forward to the arrival of summer to restock my pantry for gifts to last through next winter!
Canning and cooking from old family recipes!
What a lovely lovely book! My mom's family is British, so I love the idea of bringing more British traditional recipes into my canning repertoire.
My family has always gone to brunch for Easter. Even though my sister and I have been beyond the age of wearing Easter bonnets our dad always asks that we wear one. Last year we wore vintage hats for brunch along with gloves. It made him very happy to see us dressed up! You'll find us once again in hats this Sunday.
Thank you for the giveaway!
I'd LOVE to see that book! I'm just learning to 'can' things and want to try jam next. And those jars are amazing. :) Traditions... I'm pretty much a traditional girl. I love sleeping under my grandma's quilt and using my nana's old mixing bowl when I cook. Those are my traditions. :)