Canning, anyone?

[anakiwa]

My latest hobby started with finally reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (Barbara Kingsolver) in July.

Great book! Her book, as well as 'Omnivore's Dilema' and the localvore movement here in Vermont got me canning, freezing, and dehydrating.

I filled all our medium sized jars with tomatoes and figured I had to stop (the dehydrator is running as I write this though). For anyone looking for advice, Joy of Cooking has a fairly comprehensive section on preserving food (I suspect any comprehensive cookbook might as well- you may already have the info on your shelf). We don't bother skinning or seeding the tomatoes- we just cut out the stems, quarter them and put them through the food processor. We cook off a little of the extra liquid and then can them plain (with vinegar or citric acid for safety). When we use them- we'll add garlic, wine, red pepper, whatever we want to make sauce- or just add to a recipe.

I also put quarts and quarts of berries into the freezer- I'm loving having fruit on my cereal every day! (And the quality of fruit that you've cleaned and tray frozen yourself is great- I suspect I could probably pass them off as fresh if I tried).

[bambu101]

This site is a good resource for canning and preserving recipes, questions, links,supplies, etc:

http://www.freshpreserving.com/phpbb...ac8919c2585c2d