Learning to Preserve

I decided that I needed a blog to talk about what I am doing in my kitchen. I like to cook a lot and am always experimenting. Sometimes I share these exploits on Facebook but not everyone is interested in my cooking spam. Not only do I need a spot for real time updates, but I also want to reflect on how things went.

Canning strawberry preserves

For example, in May I learned to can. This is a skill I've always wanted to pick up and the Baltimore Orchard Project offered a free workshop on preserving and canning. Well, the teacher, who I believe was Beth Gill from Sweetness Follows, was excellent and I learned a lot. She was also very open to questions and had a hands on teaching approach, so I could ask her all about those little details that you don't think about unless you are actually doing it.

This photo shows my first batch of jam. I bought some strawberries from the farmer's market and Beth's recipe worked well. I now use it for all small batch berry jams. Now that I have some more experience with preserve making I appreciate the fact that she taught us to can without pectin, only adding it if the fruit doesn't jell. So many recipes automatically call for a box of pectin and I found that it isn't needed if the fruit is fresh enough.

Now I'm working on wineberry jam, with berries picked from the woods near where I live.