Preserving madness

When like-minded people engage in an activity which all are mildly obsessed with, excess is just a stone's-throw away. That's why last night at about 8pm, my canning partners and I decided there was nothing for it: we had to preserve what remained of our bushel of tomatoes.

Ok, let me back up. Last year Sean and Jane and I had 3 magnificent weekends of preserving, ending up with chutney, chili sauce, 2 types of jam and several litres of preserved peaches. We were determined to increase our results this year, but between their new baby and my apartment move, we had so far preserved doodlysquat and the season was waning. I was starting to feel a bit desperate, and that's when the madness set in. We met at the market and goaded each other into not just doubling the quantity of peaches we preserved last year but TRIPLING it. And we knew we needed a triple batch of chili sauce. But that doesn't sound like too much, right? Alas, it was just twenty minutes later while negotiating with a very young farmer's daughter for 36 plum tomatoes that she uttered the fateful phrase, "why don't you just buy a bushel? It's only $12."


Now, gentle reader, how am I, an occasionally insane, type-A, stay-up-all-night personality, to respond to that? Not to mention that at 9am on a Saturday I was besieged by rolling buggies, strollers, Golden Retrievers and oversized backpacks full of corn and cauliflower, and there was neither time nor space to think rationally about this decision. The next thing I knew, we were hauling a BUSHEL of plum tomatoes on top of THREE FLATS of peaches.



Ah, preserving day. When madness takes hold of you lock stock and barrel. And just when you think you have blanched, quartered and skinned as many peaches as possible, there is still another sinkful to conquer. Once appropriately prepped, we shoved the sweet, juicy beauties into jars, topped up with thin sugar syrup, wiped rims, snapped on lids and rings and lovingly simmered them for 20 minutes. There is nothing quite so satisfying as hearing the dull >snap< of the lids sealing.

But there was no rest for us (just a fortifying turkey and cranberry sandwich). After chopping the onions and peppers for chili sauce Sean removed the 36 tomatoes required. He then looked at what remained of the bushel, looked over at me and remarked "you've got to be kidding me". Yeah, those 36 tomatoes made up about a sixth of the bushel. We didn't say much for a long while after that. But then we agreed that it would be criminal to toss the tomatoes -- there was no way we could eat through them in a week. We looked at each other and understood: this was going to be a long evening. We consulted books and the web, then simply blanched, skinned, quartered, packed into jars with water and sealed the jars. Results to follow in another post, no doubt.

Each year we forget how very long it takes to bring a canner to a boil; how long the chili sauce simmers before it's right; how much ice we'll need for the blanching stages; how sticky the kitchen floor gets mid-way through the day. But we don't forget the sublime pleasure of snapping open a litre of the sweetest sunshiney peaches on a snow day in January, or of the perfect flavour match between our chili sauce and a wedge of tourtiere on Christmas Eve.