putting things into cans.

foodlife

Sep 11

Written By

my mom happens to be one of the all-time most talented people i know. she speaks two languages, she raised five (arguably) successful children, and she does things like canning on a regular basis. it's amazing. i aspire to be just like her when i'm a fully grown adult, so to begin that long journey, i went over to my parents house for a marathon canning session over the weekend. gosh, that sounds weird. but it is what happened.we started out pickling beets. i don't know about all of you out there, but i love pickled beets. i could eat a whole jar in one sitting. but i won't do that, because i am pretty sure my skin would turn purple. (insider secret: beets turn your pee purple. TMI? sorry, but that is a true fact, and when you know facts like that, they have to be shared.) we started out with 15 pounds of beets, and after lots of boiling, peeling, slicing, and pickling, we ended with 18 pints of pickled beets. aren't they gorgeous?then we tossed together some pesto. does anyone have any idea how much basil you actually need to make a half pint of pesto? i'll tell you. about a half a bush worth of leaves. good thing my mom has about 8 plants. making your own pesto is incredibly easy, you just need the ingredients (basil, olive oil, walnuts, pine nuts, salt, parmesan cheese, garlic and parsley) and a blender. seriously, that's all it is. it's really cost-effective to make it on your own too, all the ingredients are inexpensive, and the time for labor is completely worth it.the real adventure of the day came when we made tomato sauce. this was the one thing that neither of us had ever attempted before. it was....involved. yes, involved sounds nice. first, you have to cook down about 60 (!) tomatoes and wait for them to boil:then you need to pour the tomato mixture into this cool contraption that separates the flesh from the skin and seeds (you can use a blender too, but that is way less cool). our contraption is italian, which i'm assuming is because italians make a lot of tomato sauce. stereotypes? this part is pretty fun, but takes a really long time, and you WILL get tomato juice all over your sweater. wear an apron and avoid my mistakes.once all of it has been pureed and separated, you should fill every single large pot that your mom owns and wait for the tomato sauce to thicken and cook down to about half of its volume. once it's cooked down, you put it into jars, cover them and put them in a water bath to seal completely. i don't have any photos of this last part because it was 4:00pm and i had to leave my mom to finish on her own. UPDATE: my mom informed me that we should have done the tomatoes first, because it took them so long to cook down, she only finished sealing them at midnight...she did say that it is delicious sauce though. thank you mom, you are a rockstar!if anyone ever has a chance to get all homey and can your own food, i recommend it 100%. it takes a little planning and organization, also a bunch of large pots, but it's so worth it. having a hooley mom there to help makes it much easier too. i will consider renting her out for the right price. contact me with questions.