First Beans

A little later than usual, but here they come! The first load is in the canner as I write. I favor Tenderettes rather than the half-runner (string) beans almost everyone in this area grows. Here the jars are almost ready..When is canning like turkey frying? When you use the turkey fryer to can! I have an electric stove in my kitchen and I can't can on it because it ruins the stove--trust me on this, I ruined my first electric stove that way. So what to do when natural gas isn't an option?

I hit on the idea when I saw a turkey fryer at the store. Perfect! Heavy construction for weighty canner, runs on propane, and I can do it outside, keeping the heat out of the house. One word of caution: it gets a lot hotter than a stove burner, so the heat must be adjusted 'way down or it heats up too fast and boils the liquid out of the jars--not a good thing.

I remembered a poem I wrote a couple of years ago, about the days before we put electricity in and canning was our main method of preserving food.

I found a list stuck in a cookbook that listed all the things I planned to put up in 1979, and that list led to this poem:

Canning To-Do List

Fifty jars of golden peaches
one hundred of pickles, dill or sweet
fifty jars of stringless green beans
and twenty of the pickled beets

Three hundred pints of jam and jelly
fifty quarts of apple butter
good beef stew and spicy salsa
pickled peppers, tangy mincemeat

one hundred jars of canned tomatoes
and fifty more of juice
fifty corn and fifty peas
fifty more of applesauce

Hominy and canned potatoes
pinto beans and collard greens
venison and sage-y sausage
turkey, chicken, tender pork

Blackberries, pears and elderberries
candied crabapples, orange pumpkin
jars and jars of purple juice
from squeezed-out grapes and plums

One thousand jars to fill the cellar
with red and purple, green and gold
one thousand jars of winter comfort
one thousand jars that kept us whole

Today the shelves are not as full
some jars stand empty in the dark
but I remember times we faced
the winters with a thousand jars

c Susanna Holstein 2004