I needed a quart of tomatoes for a pot of chili, so I reached for a jar on the shelf. My mother gave me an entire case a couple of months ago. Some of the quarts had been canned in 2012, and they needed to be used. I was struck by how meticulous my mother preserves and stores food, and I wanted to show you.
My dad and my mom worked hand in hand at canning. It was more my dad's thing than my mom's. When he was a child, he was so poor that he often went hungry, and all his life he never wanted to be hungry again. He was always locating produce that he and Mama would put into jars. They were always preparing for the end-times.
First of all, the jar looks like this. This is a jar of tomatoes wrapped in a pharmacy bag, the small flat kind the pharmacist puts your medicine in. My parents reused and recycled everything. They were not necessarily health-conscious, but organic agriculture always made sense to them. Out of all the alternative ideas I brought home to them, this one stuck. They would can whatever produce they had, but you can see that being organic was important to them, because they noted it.
These particular tomatoes were grown by Freddie White, who was a chemical farmer in Appling County who saw a way to make more money with organics. He grew organically for Whole Foods and other retailers until he passed away a few years ago. He was a close friend of my dad, and a good friend of mine. Eating tomatoes he grew feels really good -- Freddie continues to nourish my family.
On the paper bag, as well, is written "Canning Jar." You'd probably never guess why this is written there. Here's the reason: some jars are real canning jars, produced by companies like Mason & Ball, and some are post-commercial jars that products like mayonnaise and salsa came in. If the rings and lids fit the recycled jars, my parents used them, although as you can see, real canning jars were always superior (and, indeed, less apt to burst in pressure canners & boiling-water baths.)
My dad and my mom worked hand in hand at canning. It was more my dad's thing than my mom's. When he was a child, he was so poor that he often went hungry, and all his life he never wanted to be hungry again. He was always locating produce that he and Mama would put into jars. They were always preparing for the end-times.
First of all, the jar looks like this. This is a jar of tomatoes wrapped in a pharmacy bag, the small flat kind the pharmacist puts your medicine in. My parents reused and recycled everything. They were not necessarily health-conscious, but organic agriculture always made sense to them. Out of all the alternative ideas I brought home to them, this one stuck. They would can whatever produce they had, but you can see that being organic was important to them, because they noted it.
These particular tomatoes were grown by Freddie White, who was a chemical farmer in Appling County who saw a way to make more money with organics. He grew organically for Whole Foods and other retailers until he passed away a few years ago. He was a close friend of my dad, and a good friend of mine. Eating tomatoes he grew feels really good -- Freddie continues to nourish my family.
On the paper bag, as well, is written "Canning Jar." You'd probably never guess why this is written there. Here's the reason: some jars are real canning jars, produced by companies like Mason & Ball, and some are post-commercial jars that products like mayonnaise and salsa came in. If the rings and lids fit the recycled jars, my parents used them, although as you can see, real canning jars were always superior (and, indeed, less apt to burst in pressure canners & boiling-water baths.)
Then my mother cuts a 6-inch square of clear plastic from a bread bag, and she screws the band over ring with the plastic between. This keeps the ring from rusting. While we're at this photo, notice the dark dots in the tomatoes. More about that in a minute.
Then in her neat and careful handwriting, on a tiny label that will be affixed to the lid, my mother repeats what is in the jar and the date that it got there. In this case, on April 4, 2012 my mother and father were canning organic tomatoes grown by their friend and mine, Freddie White, who loved growing food more than anything in the world and worked all his life doing it and was very successful at it.
Below you'll see what the jar looks like after 9 years. The dark spots are tomato seeds, which for some reason tend to darken over time. They also float higher in the jar. The jar was still sealed and the contents are safe -- to be 100% sure there is no botulism, as I do with all canned products, I make sure the product is boiled at least 15 minutes, in this case in the pot of chili as it simmers. My mom has begun to pour off the top cup or so of tomatoes before she cooks with them, but in chili and most soups you can't see the darkened seeds, so I just use them as they are.
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