My grandmother bought this pressure canner used from an extended family member at least fifty years ago. It’s probably more like sixty. I can’t imagine how many jars of vegetables it’s processed over the passed decades.
Wouldn’t you love to hear all the conversations shared in the heat all of those kitchens? The gossip, the laughter…all the while checking the pressure, keeping it at ten pounds for thirty-five minutes, praying that none of the jars would break.
It holds seven quart jars at a time, a few more of pint ones. It looks like an old soldier scarred from many battles. Can you see the clamps? The handles have all broken or worn off. To get a tight seal, we have to turn each one with pliers now. We’ve Googled the name on the lid to replace them to no avail, unfortunately.
A farm family, we always put up fruits and vegetables, freezing and canning them from spring till fall. We also had chickens, hogs, and cows. We grew or raised most of what we ate.
My husband often shares how his mother would stretch their food budget at the end of the month by serving those tiny potato sticks and making them seem like treats, a special side dish, when back in the day, they probably cost about ten cents a can.
I don’t have stories like that. We always had food and plenty of it and many choices, too. We had food because we worked so hard in the growing season to preserve all those good things.
I can’t remember how many times my daddy said something like, “If you want to eat next winter, you have to help get it now,” when we complained about picking or shelling or shucking.
Today people have embraced the convenience of grocery-store-canned vegetables, but home-canned tomatoes are hands down better. Yes, we could buy cans of tomatoes, but canning our own is what we do.
How about you? Do you can or freeze fruits or vegetables?
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