Suburban Valkyrie

New pursuits fall into my life and consume all of my attention. And so it was that I fell into canning.

My mother had always canned. Each summer would yield dozens of pints of tomatoes and beans and cut crystal jars of ruby red strawberry jam.

I had never expressed an interest in canning - probably not least of which is because I envisioned hours bending over steaming pots in my tiny kitchen, and trying to find different things to do with the dozens of jars of finished products.

Last summer, my colleague Rose introduced me to Food in Jars, the book penned by food blogger Marisa McClellan - who also happens to live in the Philadelphia area. I was immediately smitten.

McClellan, who lives in an apartment in the city, focuses on canning in small batches. Many of her recipes yield only a couple pints of this or four half-pints of that. The smaller amounts somehow made the whole idea seem less intimidating.

She demystified the whole process of canning, especially the equipment needed. In the end, it turned out that I had much of what I needed already on hand and I only needed to buy a couple items to launch the Great Canning Experiment of 2014 in my own kitchen.

Into my Amazon cart went a granitewear canning pot. A trip to Target yielded small, 4 oz canning jars (OH SO CUTE) and various implements. The utensil set - a jar lifter, lid lifter, headspace tool and wide-mouth funnel - was a particularly good buy at something like $6. I also picked up a copy of the tried and true Ball Blue Book guide to preserving.

For my first attempt, I chose one of McClellan's recipes that looked simple enough but offered the promise of tantalizing flavors - Blueberry Ginger Jam.

Ingredients include blueberries, sugar, fresh ginger and crystallized ginger. My mouth watered just reading the ingredients list. I could just taste that flavor explosion.

Key to the success of this project was going to be the freshness of the blueberries. As with most dishes, the simpler the recipe, the more important it is to use the best, freshest, most flavorful ingredients. Since I don't grow blueberries, I had to find an alternate source.

Living in Bucks County, Pa., offers no end to the options for fresh, local food. We buy our milk in glass bottles produced at the dairy (Penn View Farm) in the same township where we live. Within a 7-minute drive from my front door, we can get pulled pork and maple-glazed, spiral-sliced ham from Blooming Glen Pork, grass-fed Angus beef from Tussock Sedge Farm. And whenever I want fresh, in-season, local produce, I stop by Bolton's Farm Market, literally 4 minutes from my house. A quick trip to Bolton's on this particular day yielded two dry pints of fresh-picked blueberries.


McClellan's recipe - Blueberry Jam with Crystallized Ginger - was simple. If you're interested in checking it out, it's in her Preserving by the Pint book. You may be able to find it in a local bookstore. There's a link on McClellan's blog.

As for my experiment with it, everything went as planned. I was pretty focused on the process and didn't stop to take enough photos. But you get the idea.



The result: 4 tiny jars of amazing flavor.