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Sharon captures the flavors of the harvest by canning at home.

Monday Sep 08, 2008.     By Sharon Hoyer

Lifestyle Feed

As harvest season swings into full tilt, you may find yourself—as I do—pacing between stands at the farmers market, battling the urge to load up on more fresh produce than is humanly possible to eat in one week. You may also detect a sense of urgency tickling your subconscious as the days get shorter—an instinct to hoard and fatten up on all the ripe fruits and vegetables you can get your paws on before the markets close for the winter. It's a feeling with which I've become well-acquainted, especially since I started making an effort to cook in accordance with the seasons. The light is changing and I'm looking up recipes for 50 ways to prepare acorn squash, but Midwest winters are long and I'll be willing to give my left nostril for a ripe blueberry by Presidents Day.

There is one way to enjoy locally grown food in the dead of winter: harvest it at its ripest and can it. Canned food, like many features of our modern society (the highway system, mass production), was originally developed to support the military. During the Napoleonic Wars, the French newspaper Le Monde offered a sizable cash prize to any person who could find a way to preserve fresh food to ship to the troops. Nicholas Appert won the contest with his discovery that food sealed in glass jars and sufficiently heated doesn't go bad (about 50 years later Louis Pasteur would explain this phenomenon when he found link between bacteria and food spoilage). Tinned food soon followed and now the bulk of our grocery store shelves are weighted with cans of every imaginable food, from fruit salad to coconut milk—and some that defy the imagination. Like Spam.

The fine art of home canning lives on as a way to preserve fresh, locally produced food, and the process hasn't changed in the past 150 years. Canning prevents bacteria growth by destroying enzymes that break down food and removing oxygen from the storage container. High-acid foods—foods with a pH of 4.6 or lower, including most fruit, fruit preserves, tomatoes and pickled vegetables—contain enough acid to retard bacteria growth and may be safely preserved by boiling canning jars in a large pot on the stove. Low-acid foods (most vegetables) require a pressure canner to be properly preserved. Now that the markets are flooded with perfect, ripe high-acid peaches, late August seemed like the perfect time to try my hand at some novice home canning.

My friend Joe had invested in canning tools last fall but never got around to the project. He already had on hand a dozen mason jars with new lids, a five-gallon stock pot and rubber-coated tongs to lift jars out of boiling water, so my job was easy: research safe canning practices and head up to the Evanston farmers market to obtain a bushel of peaches. I took the former duty quite seriously since improper canning can lead to rotten peaches, a lot of wasted effort and—worst-case scenario—botulism. I went to several sources and wound up spending most of my time with the USDA's Complete Guide to Home Canning (conveniently available complete and unabridged on the National Center for Home Food Preservation website).

The process is fairly simple and you only need a few special tools: wide-mouthed mason jars and unused lids with fresh gaskets, a pot large enough to submerge your jars one to two inches under water and a rack to remove jars from the pot or a pair of tongs to lift them out one at a time. Joe and I set aside several hours to peel, package and process our peaches; it was a delightful way to spend a Saturday afternoon and we now each have six pints of summertime in stasis, ready to be cracked open when we get a hankering for peach cobbler in January.

Home canning fresh peaches (I also highly encourage you to supplement my instructions with the USDA Guide):

1. Prepare a light simple syrup by boiling 1 part sugar to 2 parts water. For heavier syrup, add more sugar. You can also pack the peaches in plain old boiling water if you prefer.

2. Peel. This is by far the most time-consuming step. To make peeling several pounds of fruit less grueling, blanch the peaches in boiling water for 30-60 seconds then immediately dunk them in ice water to loosen the skins. If you plan to can them raw, keep the peeled fruit in water with a dash of vinegar and sugar to prevent discoloration.

3. Cook for 5-10 minutes in syrup (optional). Peaches can be packed in jars raw or cooked. Cooking is recommended to help remove air and keep the fruit from floating in the jar.

4. Pack jars and add boiling syrup or water, leaving 1/2-inch headspace to the top of the jar. Take a plastic spatula and run it vertically into the jar. Turn the jar as you slide the spatula up and down along the sides, releasing any trapped air. Add extra syrup if necessary.

5. Add lids. Before screwing on the lid, check the rim of the jar and the lid for damage. Wipe the rim of the jar with a paper towel to insure a good seal then place lid on top and tighten the band. Screw on the band so it is snug, but not overly tight. If the lid is too tight expanded air can't escape during processing and the jars can break.

6. Process. Processing times vary depending on the food and elevation at which it's boiled. Peaches down here at sea level should be boiled 20-25 minutes for hot (cooked) pack, 25-30 for raw pack. Place the jars in pot and make sure the boiling water covers the lids by 1-2 inches. Cover canner. Set timer. Go play a hand of cards.

7. Allow jars to cool on a rack or towel at least one inch apart for 12-24 hours. Don't tighten or muck around with the lids after they've been processed; twisting the lids can break the seal. After the jars have cooled, press gently on the lids to make sure they don't pop up. A slightly concave lid indicates a good seal. If any of the jars failed to seal, put 'em in the fridge to eat immediately or you can re-process them within 48 hours.

For more information on home canning, recipes for preserves, butters, sauces and other delicious home-canned foods, check out the USDA Guide. For helpful step-by-step tutorials on home canning, visit the Ball jar company website.

It took a move from the regimented lawnscapes of the suburbs to the congestion of a major metropolis for Sharon to look twice at what she puts in the trash, down the sink and into her own body. She reports fortnightly on her endeavors to change "greening" from calculated deviation to a practicable way of life. You can contact her here.