still following advice from 1988? you might be 🤔
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'Tis the season... I started canning a few of my favorite foods this week, including cinnamon applesauce (made from local apples) and plum jam (made from plums I'd frozen over the summer). Canning is one of my favorite ways to preserve food, and it was the first method I tried when I started gardening nearly 2 decades ago. I find it so rewarding (and almost therapeutic) to spend a day boiling, ladling, and sealing dozens of jars of all the fruits and vegetables I worked hard to grow all season, and I love watching my pantry fill up with colorful mason jars in neat, orderly rows. In the beginning, I followed all the canning rules "by the book" as that's what I'd always read on other blogs. But then I became an ambassador for Ball Canning (the company that manufactures the majority of canning jars on the market) and learned a few tricks from their official test kitchen that streamlined my canning process tremendously. And, I was shocked to learn that some of the canning rules still being followed today actually pre-date official guidelines that were set in 1988! If you're not into canning, I've got a few other food preserving recipes below that are worth trying (and don't involve huge pots of boiling water). Seasonal tipsOne recipe that needs to be started this month (if you want it ready in time for holiday gift giving) is my popular limoncello (and its cousins, orangecello and grapefruitcello). They need a few weeks of steeping and resting before going into bottles, and are very much worth the effort! Speaking of gift giving, a friend just ran across one of my books, The National Parks Cookbook, at an adorable mountain-themed gift shop called Budd + Finn here in Bend, Oregon. Fall has always been one of my favorite times to visit the national parks with the smaller crowds, changing colors, and cooler weather. But if you can't make it out until spring or summer, this book will give you something to look forward to. 😄 You can find all of my books on my site (and if you're able, please support your local brick-and-mortar—any bookstore can order my books if they don't already carry them, you just have to ask!). P.S. Stop following outdated canning advice that was established before 1988. These are the new and updated guidelines, straight from the canning authorities themselves. |
Garden Betty
For people who want to grow more food with less work. 🌱 This is my weekly newsletter loved by 38,000+ subscribers—here's what one of them had to say: "These are not the regular run-of-the-mill garden-based emails. You actually touch on more unusual tidbits that encourage me to keep growing and learning."