Canning & Jamming
For generations, people have preserved summer produce to enjoy over the winter. Traditional preservation methods—some thousands of years old—include salt, oil, sugar, alcohol, vinegar, drying, cold storage and fermentation. Vacuum processing—basically the dehydration and rehydration of foods—was introduced in the 19th century; there are records of British officers ordering peas from the ultra-upscale Harrods department store to be sent to the Crimea during that war. Home canning began around the turn of the twentieth century and really caught on with the World War II impetus to grow Victory gardens. Then came freezing—the biggest twentieth century contribution to preserving food.
Our forebears had no choice; they had to either preserve food or starve in the winter. That is not a dilemma for us today—we can just run to the grocery store. Happily, with food preservation no longer a necessity, we can simply have fun collecting plentiful summer produce from our local markets and experimenting with ways of combining flavors in unusual ways to create singular winter treats. You can still “put up” tomatoes or peaches, but how about lemon verbena jam, rose hip jelly or strawberry jam with a grind or two of black pepper? Just ask Woodhaven Drive resident Susan Marquesen, a certified master food preserver.