While doing research for my canning cookbook, which involves pouring through cookbooks from the 1920s, I’ve come to realize there’s an aura of psychotic caution that now surrounds the craft  that didn’t exist years ago. I suppose this is because we’re simply less familiar with canning today, so it seems more intimidating than it actually is. And you could argue that improvements in culinary science have made the USDA’s revamped rules and regulations and bylaws and strictures of today necessary.

But the overall effect is that canning is now perceived as being more involved and time consuming than ever.  Back in the day, when everybody canned, when everybody had to can, preserving instructions were no more involved than “cook some relatively high acid food, seal it in a jar and — TA DA! It’s canned!  Enjoy your delicate preserves 6 months or a year from now!”

Now you have to sterilize the jars, pre-heat and jars and lids, wipe down the sides of the jar, process the jars in a boiling water bath for a specific length of time, adjusting for elevation…..gak! It’s enough to make you think you need to wear a biohazard suit for making pickles.

This difference was really brought home to me over the weekend when I tested a bunch of recipes with my neighbor Ellen — who’s been canning for 35 years — and her daughter Yvonne. A canner in the classic sense, Ellen simply cooks the food,  ladles it into a jar and allows the heat of the food to create an airtight seal. She didn’t bother with a boiling water bath or pre-sterilizing jars. And in 35 years, she’s never had food poisoning.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying modern food preservation rules should be flouted. And I’m sure my publisher will want to go heavy on the rules. But I think the excessively cautious tone of canning manuals nowadays is more a reflection of our litigious society than anything else…on par with McDonalds labeling coffee “very hot.”

In other words, even if you broke half the canning rules of 2009, your homemade jellies and pickles and salsas will probably still come out delicious.

So I have to test a bunch of recipes for the canning cookbook I’m writing, and my writing partner/chef Kelly Geary turned over a large batch of berry recipes. Delicious, innovative berry recipes, of course —  You’re just going to have to buy the book to find out how awesome they are! On shelves Summer 2010! Tell your friends! — but being that it’s the tail end of August,berries are out of season.

Which means that I have to use berries procured from good ole Wally World. Seal em up, and stash em somewhere safe so I can enjoy the bland, mealy taste of agri-berries this winter!

Somehow, Walmart canning just isn’t the same.

My peach trees are heavy with fruit.  It’s been a mad dash to preserve them before they go bad (why is it that peaches seem to go off in like a day?)

Most peach recipes call for peeling the fruit first, a potentially burdensome task if you’re putting up 10-15 pounds of the stuff.

Here is the fastest and easiest way I have found to perform this critical task.  This method also works great with tomatoes.

I just learned that produce loses nearly half its nutrients within a few days of being picked, unless it’s preserved or cooled, according to the USDA. Preserving peaches the day they’re picked ensures optimum nutrient retention.  Try to use ripe, not under ripe, peaches since this peeling method doesn’t work well, otherwise.

First, make an X in the bottom of each peach with a knife.

Add the peach to a pot of boiling water….

….and boil 10-15 seconds to loosen the skin. Any longer will cook the peach, which you may not want.

Do a bunch simultaneously if you’re a “canner on-the-go.” Or is that a contradiction?

Voila — the skin is sufficiently loosened for easy peeling.

I followed a Ball recipe for peach butter, but the problem with the Ball book is that fruit recipes tend to be so stinking sweet. The peach butter recipe, for example, called for 4 cups of sugar to 4 1/2 cups of peaches, tarted up with the zest and juice from one lemon. That combination seemed rather cloying, so I took liberties with their recipe — which isn’t recommended by the canning police (USDA, Ball, etc), by the way  — by reducing the amount of sugar to 2 cups, and adding the juice/zest of 2 lemons, plus the juice of 1 lime. I likes my fruit butter tart with a touch of sweet!

Two cups of sugar, not four.

Because I added more liquid and less sugar, the butter was considerably runnier and therefore had to cook down a lot longer than what the recipe called for. I ended up letting the peaches cook down for an hour and a half. I also made sure to cook it in very wide-bottomed pan. Exposing the fruit to a greater surface area condenses the butter faster.

Testing for consistency by using a chilled plate or spoon: If the juice separates from the fruit, it needs to cook down more. Mine needed to cook down more.

After it reached the proper consistency — that is, looked like it could be spread on a piece of toast without dribbling — I packed the butter into pint jars, leaving a 1/4-inch headspace, and processed them in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes.

This stuff will go down smooove come January.

Yesterday I complained about having to can tomatoes. Well, I ended up being seized by some type-A canning demon because I ended up  preserving:

- Roasted tomato-chipotle salsa, 4 pints

- Peach butter, 4 pints

- Peach and hot pepper relish, 5 pints

And because I really am losing a grip on reality, I even labeled each jar with stickers….labels specifically designed for canning jar!!! That I ordered online. I’m letting this sink in: I DECORATED JARS WITH STICKERS. Stickers in the shape of watermelons and strawberries and cucumbers! I don’t do stickers. I’ve never done stickers. What the hell is happening to me??? What’s next? Toilet paper cozies in my bathroom?

Here’s a problem I never thought I’d encounter:  HAVING to can. I HAVE to can. I don’t WANT to can, I have to. Or else I will lose 30 pounds of tomatoes, a precious commodity that only comes around once a year. If I DON’T can, I will be forced to buy the mealy mush that passes for tomatoes at Walmart come February.

What awaits me this morning

So THIS is what it was like in my grandma’s day…when the procurement of food was more of a fulltime job than a fun hobby. And we wonder why grandmas threw their canning pots and Ball jars out the window once convenient tins of processed vegetables became available in grocery stores.

As much as foodies like to malign the agricultural revolution of the 1940s as the time when “real, local food” gave way to the Cheese Whiz and Lunchables food culture of today, it did have its good points:  It released women from the drudgery of the stove.

And now I find myself registering all these unused tomatoes with a heavy sigh. It’s no small point that tomatoes are the most labor intensive produce to can because they’re so juicy, and the juice must be cooked down so whatever you’re making has a thick consistency. I’ve already canned pizza sauce, pasta sauce, salsa……and now I’m forcing myself to can roasted tomato chipotle salsa.

First I roast, then rehydrate a mix of guajillo and chipotle chiles.

Then I blacken a bunch of tomatoes, green peppers, onions and a head of garlic under the broiler.

….and….that’s all I’ve accomplished so far.  Women’s work sucks!