Food preservation in the time of reality
Friday, August 9, 2013 at 7:45AM
;)
This roasted salsa took me a full week to make. Not because it was undergoing sensitive, time-activated developments in flavor. Nor because of the voluminous quantity that overfloweth from my salsa pot (it was under 4 quarts’ worth). No, the reason it took me so long to finish this salsa was everyday life, daily demands upon time, otherwise known as reality.
I invite you to my reality, which entails stretching out canning recipes as much as possible to make it work in the confines of my busy schedule. For this particular salsa, I enlisted the help of my grill-master wife in roasting all the veggies, let them cool on the counter, then refrigerated them for 3 days (aka left town). The next installment was operation roasted tomato peeling plus another day in the fridge because that was enough work for an evening. The following day I food processed everything (in batches) and realized I didn’t have the size jars I was hoping to use, so salsa complete, but it spent one more day getting delicious in the fridge before I could can it the next day.
With fruit, I macerate (sometimes for days). With laborious produce, the tomato or peach in need of peeling, the peppers in need of seeding or looking for a roasting, or a whole bunch of large things in need of cutting up, I figure out how to stage the process without compromising quality. So long as you bring the contents of your preserves to a boil prior to canning them, it doesn’t really matter how long it took you to get to that point.
Sure, I could omit preserving entirely, and have more time to do other things, but I like it. I like how the preserved goods taste, I like how I give these things away around the holidays and as thank you or just-because gifts. I like that my schedule has things like ‘pears’ and ‘tomatoes’ on it and that other people have those things on their agenda too.
What kinds of things do you do to make preserving fit into your schedule? What keeps you going with canning?
Want the recipe for this roasted salsa? Well, thanks to last year’s delicious salsa from a fellow gardener in our nabe garden, I discovered and slightly modified the original roasted tomato salsa recipe in Canning for a New Generation. Check it out there!
Disclosure: This post includes a link to my Amazon shop, and if you purchase something from there or after visiting my shop I stand to make a small commission.
Reader Comments (10)
This is lovely. I'm so glad to hear I'm not the only one who takes three days to complete preserving recipes that claim to take three hours. The other way I fit preserving into my daily life is by being really picky. I simply don't have time to do all the canning, pickling, jamming, and freezing that I would like to do, so I pick specific projects. I have also learned that certain things that are usually canned, like jam and salsa, freeze really well. The plastic tubs are not as pretty sitting in the freezer as the sparkly glass jars are sitting in the cupboard, but that's alright.
Kathleen, so true! Thanks for your insight here.
This post makes me feel so much better about the peach jam I canned this week that had macerated for FOUR days! I continue to can because for me, there is a deep, abiding satisfaction that comes with preserving. It draws from so many aspects of life (creative, scientific, historical, etc...) that I feel like preserving feeds my body AND my soul!
I can say that each year is an editing process; realizing what we used none of or need more of and what I'd like to try new for the season, and this keeps my canning schedule dynamic (but not always timely!)
I have vivid memories from my childhood of canning peaches on the hottest night of August and my parents staying up until the late hours of the night to finish the last quarts. I've done that myself, but this year with work, grad school and a new puppy, it's small-batch canning or nothing. Since nothing would make me sad and leave me bereft of homemade gifts, I'm taking a page from your book - cutting up the fruit one day, making the jam a few days later.
I've found some recipes more easy to stretch than others, I've definitely bungled a few things in my time. Macerating is a GREAT idea that I need to take more advantage of.
This week I was proud of myself to think ahead and buy my peaches Thursday, so they'd be (more likely) to be ripe enough to peel by Saturday. And I did an overnight salt-water soak on my cukes so I can put up a couple of a jars of pickles tonight.
One of my favorite things is to invite a friend over to share some wine and keep me company in the kitchen while I putter from one activity to another.
I love these insights Carly, JR & Rachel! Friends plus wine while the kitchen goings on are going on is one way I, too, fit in socializing with busy life stuff and home-made priorities! Rock on friends, thanks for commenting.
Oh man, I can so relate. I regularly forget things in the fridge —extra maceration time will deepen the flavors, right? This is what I tell myself. I'm trying to let go of all the "shoulds" and not take on more than I have time for, but this is easier said than done. It's still crushing to miss a harvest, but there's always next year.
I do most of my canning after everyone else has gone to bed. I enjoy the quiet time and the ability to work on my own schedule with few interruptions. From late summer until the end of fall I can frequently be found happily puttering around in my kitchen until 3 or 4 or even 5 am.
This year our peaches were late, our apples and pears are early and I've got several 5 gallon buckets of fruit still left to clean, peel and process.
It's the busiest time of year for me (both at work and at home) but walking into my pantry in February and seeing rows of jams, jellies, sauces and various other homemade goodies makes it worth missing out on a little sleep in August and September.
Is there anywhere I can find the recipe for this roasted salsa? This is similar to what we make to eat fresh, and I would LOVE to can something like it for winter! Thank you!
Hi Kayla,
Check out the book Canning for a New Generation's Charred Tomato and Chile Salsa recipe. The book is linked above within the post and I bet your local library has a copy if you aren't able to buy any new books.