Canning 101

Canning is fun! Well, it's rewarding at least. I have only made preserves but I want to let you know that it's not as difficult as you might think and the rewards are delicious. By the way, the difference between a jam and a preserve is that in a preserve, the fruit is, well, preserved. To make jam you crush the fruit and to make jelly you strain the juice.

This is my third year making preserves. I've made apricot, plum, peach, and strawberry preserves and I've canned peaches and pears (whole pieces of fruit in a sugar syrup). I also made a tasty plum sauce. With the exception of the strawberries, all the fruit came from trees in our yard. While we grow strawberries, we don't yield nearly enough to make preserves, so we bought a flat of them from a roadside stand. I learned how to can from books and the internet. As I was stirring the syrupy mixture of plums and sugar to make more plum preserves on Saturday, I thought it might be nice to share what I know about making preserves.

Step 1 - The Fruit

If you are fortunate like I am to have the climate and yard to grow fruit trees, then you only have to harvest your own fruit. It helps to have a "trug" like these sold at leevalley.com:

If you don't have your own fruit trees, perhaps you can get ripe fruit at a good price at your local farmers market or roadside stand. Don't despair if all you have is the supermarket. You don't need bushels of fruit to make preserves. In fact, the recipes I have for fruit preserves typically call for about 2 lbs of fruit and you'll get about 5 half-pint jars out of it.

Step 2 - Equipment

Preserving food was done out of necessity by our grandmothers, and their mothers, and their mothers... so you don't need a lot of equipment to do this. But it is better if you buy the right equipment. I use the "boiling-water" method of making jams. You can make freezer jam and you can use wax for sealing the jars, but I don't use those methods. The boiling-water method requires a large pot and mason jars with 2-piece lids. Only use modern jars - antique ones may be quaint but they may not seal properly and would not be safe to use. I also use a plastic funnel that has a wide mouth designed to fit the jars, and I use tongs specially designed to fit around the mason jars and useful to have when lifting the jars in and out of the water. Another useful tool is a stick with a magnet on the end for retrieving the lids from the hot water (the lids must be heated before putting them on the jars). I don't have one but I can see how it would be useful - I use tongs, which don't grab the lids very well. All of this equipment may be available at your hardware store (not the big-box kind though) and check your grocery store too. I'm sure you can buy them on-line as well. Just Google "canning supplies."

Step 3 - Recipe
I have the Ball Blue Book of Preserving and it contains everything you need as far as directions and recipes. This is one time when improvising is not a good idea. Follow the recipe and processing times. When I started making preserves I thought I could cut down on the amount of sugar but the fruit didn't seem to thicken as it cooked (sugar helps gel formation). So I added pectin (not called for in the recipe) and it thickened right away, but the final product out of the jars was nearly rock hard. I also thought I could double the batch to save time. Bad idea. Doubling the batch may make it cook unevenly. Stick to the recipe. Enough said.

Step 4 - Going for it

Set aside a couple of hours and don your apron to protect you from any juice splatters. Use a large cooking pot for cooking your fruit. Once it gets boiling it gets quite bubbly and frothy and believe me, you don't want the sticky fruit mixture overflowing your pot! I won't detail everything you need to know to make preserves, because it varies depending on what you're making. But the basic order is this:

1) Prepare the fruit (pit, peel, cut, whatever) according to the recipe. Unless the recipe calls for peeling the fruit, I leave the peels on because the skins add more color.

2) Heat the empty jars and lids to 180 degrees. I heat the jars in the big processing pot and the flat lids in a small sauce pan. You need the jars hot when you fill them, so while a dishwasher is fine for sterilizing them, they probably won't stay hot enough when it's time to fill them. You're not supposed to let the lids boil - I accidentally have and my jars still processed fine. The screw-on ring never touches food so don't worry about them. By the way, the flat lids can only be used once, so after you've enjoyed your jar of preserves, throw the flat lid away and only keep the jar and screw-on ring.

3) Cook the fruit according to the recipe. The froth will get kind of yellowy - you can skim this off with a spoon and dispose of it. The tricky part is telling when the fruit is done. This is when I wish I had the benefit of my grandmother's experience...but I'm about 30 years too late. I've tried to follow the "gel test" in the book but it just got me frustrated. However, I think I may be getting the hang of it now (especially now that I'm following the recipe!). While making the plum preserves this time, I noticed when the fruit reached boiling, it was quite frothy and almost boiling over. After it was boiling for a while, more fruit broke down and the liquid did thicken and the level of the mixture was lower. The temperature at which it's supposed to gel is 8 degrees above boiling, so if you're near sea level it's 212+8, or 220 degrees. I used a candy thermometer to confirm that I got pretty close to the gel point. The consistency of the cooked fruit at this point also looked nice and thick. The important thing is to cook it to 212 to kill bacteria. The preserves will thicken a bit more after they set. According to the Ball book, "a true preserve does not hold its shape when spooned from the jar."

4) Retrieve the jars from the hot water and fill them, again according to the recipe. For fruit preserves you generally fill to 1/4 inch from the top.

5) Put the lids on and return them to the big processing pot. Heat the water to boiling and leave the jars in for the time stated in the recipe.

6) After the processing time is over, turn off the heat, leave the jars in for 5 more minutes, then remove. You'll start hearing the tell-tale pop of the lids being pulled in by the vacuum inside the jar. This means you have a good seal.

That's about it. I haven't had any jars not seal and I haven't had any problems with my preserves. Despite past batches that were probably over-cooked, the preserves came out well. Even the rock-hard batch tasted good. Making preserves is pretty easy and safe as long as you use clean mason jars, follow the recipe, and follow the processing instructions.

The results are well worth it. The jars of preserves make good gifts - especially because we always have some on hand. I like to give them to friends and family because they're homemade and tasty. You do need to eat them within a few weeks of opening because they don't have the preservatives of commercially produced fruit spreads and may mold.

Happy canning!

Last minute projects

I tend to do things last minute and this includes sewing projects right before I go on vacation. I wrote about making a skirt two days before we left in this post. Here's a picture of me wearing it. In Paris. In front of Reine, a fabulous fabric store in Montmartre. It was very hot and now that I look at myself, I think I ate a few too many pain au chocolat while I was there!



The skirt was comfortable, cool and and very packable but I was very bright! Most Parisians were wearing skirts and tops that were a bit more interesting than a plain old T-shirt and in either black, white, brown or olive green. Note to self: next time, just make everything out of the June issue of Burda. But the smile on my face tells it all. I was very happy to be there and very happy to be shopping at Reine. They have the most divine small-scale mannequins dressed in gorgeous outfits. I wanted to take pictures inside but they wouldn't let us.

Yes, I did buy fabric. Since there was a heat wave going on, I gravitated toward lightweight, airy cottons in neutral colors. I did want more orange but I held back. For some reason I am in an orange phase right now. I wonder what that means about me? Anyway, I have plenty of orange-y fabric at home so I tried to go more neutral. I bought four pieces: three in cotton and one in a linen blend. I envision skirts, blouses, simple jackets...things like that. If I get around to it I'll photograph what I bought.

I have plenty more photographs of our trip to show here and on flickr, but even though it's cooled down here and I feel human again, I need to carve out some time to go through them all.

The other last-minute project I worked on was a book bag for my friend we were visiting while in France. She had purchased some Olivia books online, shipped them here, and asked me to bring them when we visited. I'd never heard of Olivia, but when the books arrived I remembered seeing fabric with the Oliva-the-pig design on it. I simply had to make a book bag out of it! Thank goodness for fast internet shipping. I ordered the fabric from Z & S Fabrics, a first time order for me and I'd never even heard of the store before, but I needn't have had any concern. The fabric arrived well packaged and even tied up with a bow of some extra of the fabric I'd ordered. I didn't have a pattern - this bag is pretty simple so no pattern was needed. To make the bag more sturdy, I underlined the fabric with heavy canvas. I wrote a review on patternreview.com where I give some detail on how I made the bag. I would have taken pictures and shown a tutorial but I just didn't have time. The trip was fast approaching! Here are pictures of the finished bag (click for larger views):




Tomorrow we are off to Lambtown, a small sheep and wool festival in Dixon, CA. We went last year and although it was very hot, we had a good time. Lots of sheep, sheepdogs, wool, yarn, spinning... It's all good. It's like a small-town country fair but just about everything has to do with sheep. Baaaaa.

Hot, hot, hot

I know we're not alone, there are many people across the country suffering in the heat. Our outdoor thermometer recorded just how hot it got yesterday. The top one is a reading on the back patio, which is somewhat shaded. The one below it was the max temperature in the house yesterday. I like the way it thinks we’re having rain. As if. It won’t rain here until October. No we don't have a/c.

We don't have a/c because usually it cools down in the evening. We like to have the windows open to hear the pond, the birds, our neighbor’s dogs… However, this was the temperature at 8:38 pm:

We have a whole-house fan, which is a monstrously loud beast of a fan mounted in the hallway ceiling. It draws air into the house and up into the attic and out the vents. In the course of our remodelling work my husband has to do a lot of work up in the attic to do wiring and stuff. He knew it got hot up there even on a mild day, so he put another thermometer up there just to see. Yikes!

Suffice it to say that we were not very productive this weekend. We stayed pretty motionless in front of fans. I read magazines and started the book French Women Don't Get Fat, watched movies: Finding Neverland (wonderful), War of the Worlds (dumb but good effects), Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (silly but entertaining). My husband camped out in the family room and played X-box. I will say that the heat is a great diet aid. I had absolutely no appetite this weekend. Hopefully I lost a few pounds and not just through sweat. Incidentally, a/c is something the author of French Women Don't Get Fat says is one reason Americans eat more than the French. They don't have much air conditioning in France. I can attest to this as it was in the 90s while we were in Paris and not many stores had a/c. I made sure to book a hotel room that did and we were very glad!

I started to work on our vacation photos but it was just too hot, even sitting in front of the fan. There are only about 1200 of them (!!!). Of course there's a lot of editing to do because many of those photos are duplicates. And unfortunately there's a speck of dust in my camera somewhere that shows up on every picture as a black, spherical UFO in the sky. But not to worry, Photoshop will come to the rescue. I love digital.

We had a simply wonderful vacation. I have lots to write about but want to wait until I can show some pictures to go with my narration. It's supposed to cool down by the end of the week so hopefully I'll be able to work on the pictures soon.

Oh and we've decided that perhaps we should get air conditioning installed.

Did you make that?

That’s a question that causes me to pause. My thoughts are mixed between pride and embarrassment that I’m wearing something that looks homemade…and not in a good way. No one would look at my clothes and think I must be a budding designer in fashion school. On the contrary my style is quite "safe", even though in my secret life I’m a size 2 model with legs a mile long and a penchant…and wallet…for offbeat designer originals. In real life I could never pull it off even if I could fit into the clothes. I would just look ridiculous at work, where the majority of my co-workers wear a uniform of tops and pants that never have been nor need to be ironed.

Yesterday I wore this skirt I made, which I consider quite bold. I was definitely the brightest dressed person at work

On the way home we stopped at Pet Club to pick up some kitty food and it was here where I was asked the question. The young clerk who asked it followed up her question by saying that she too sewed and when she saw my skirt she admired the fun print and thought that she would like to make a skirt in that fabric. She wondered if I’d sewn it and then decided to just ask me. Indeed, the benefit of sewing is being able to turn fun fabric into exactly what you want.

Just prior to stopping by the Pet Club, we’d gone to REI, where my husband was hoping to buy a rain jacket for our upcoming trip and I was hoping to find a simple elastic-waist skirt. Why on earth would I buy skirt that is so easy to sew? Time. We’re leaving on the trip soon and I have 43502 things to do yet. Sewing a skirt just didn’t seem prudent with so much to do. But I’d had this skirt in mind for a while and now I really wanted it for the trip. None of the skirts I already had would do and although I knew I probably wouldn’t find what I wanted in the store, I thought since we were going there anyway I’d just act like a non-sewer and maybe buy what’s available. But there was nothing at REI. Well, there were a few skirts for sale that weren’t way above my knees and meant for toned, athletic legs, but I just couldn’t bring myself to spend the money on something so simple. Plus the choice of style and fabric would be compromised in order to buy a skirt at the last minute. I considered going to a few more stores but it was late and I hate shopping and I couldn't get the skirt out of my head, so I asked my husband to drop me at the Hancocks while he picked up a guide book at the bookstore. Believe it or not I did not have a pattern in my stash for the skirt I wanted. They were all either too short by more than 6 inches, too flat across the hips, intended for woven fabric, or had waistbands and zippers. There might be something in my vast library of Burda magazines but I did not want to take the time to trace the pattern. I also didn’t want to take the time to draw up a simple pattern or alter an existing one. So I bought a new pattern and in a few short hours (interrupted by doing a few loads of laundry) I had my skirt. It’s a bright and sunny print and exactly what I wanted for this trip. This is definitely a new record for me to buy a pattern and immediately go home and cut it out. Pictures will have to wait. I have 43501 things to do before we leave.

Blast from the past

I've been blogging about my sewing stuff for a long time, but they didn't call it blogging back when I started. In November 1997 I joined the Geocities free web-site "community" and started a home page. I posted some pictures and kept a journal (a blog!!) to let friends and family know what we were up to. In those days, people coded pages pretty much by hand. I learned some basic html code and borrowed ideas from other sites by looking at the source for their pages. This was before people coded web pages in Java and before sites got too complicated. Blinking text, color, and tables was about as fancy as it got. Later I used Microsoft Front Page to edit the pages, but the site is pretty much unchanged from when I first made it 8 1/2 years ago. So far Yahoo (who bought out Geocities) hasn't kicked my site off yet. That reminds me that I should archive it before they do...just for nostalgia's sake.

One of my pages chronicled my sewing projects . Although I learned to sew when I was a child and I sewed sporadically in my 20's, I didn't really pick it up again until the summer of 1999, when I bought a very nice sewing machine. I started sewing again by sewing baby clothes for a friend of mine. Here's one of my first projects:



Those shaggy green things are supposed to be grass. Unfortunately this wasn't the last time I cut out the fabric upside down!

It's kind of nice to go back and see what sewed. Did I really make this cute dress?



Fortunately my sewing room has improved over the years. From this set up in the dining room:



To this in a spare bedroom:




Go ahead and peruse the rest of the site if you want. Note that I changed the sewing page to point to this blog, so the link above is the only way to get to it. A lot of the other links are broken and I haven't updated it in a few years, especially now that I have this blog. At one point we even hosted the page on our own server, but we got tired of hearing the computer fan running all the time and the cost to keep the server turned on wasn't worth it. Most of the broken links point to the server.

Fabric placement

I just finished a knit top from the Jalie 2449 crossover top pattern. I love the fit and I like the fabric, so why am I not happy with the results? Well, take a look:

click for larger size

I showed it to my husband and mentioned I wasn't happy with where certain things ended up on the fabric. He said, "like the arrow pointing to your boob?" Ugh. Yeah, that. Nice. And if that's not enough it looks like the arrow points to a "B". And if you still need your eyes drawn to my chest, there's a big white box over the other one. Note that same design appears on the adjacent sleeve. Oh and look, the same thing happened on the other side! If I'd wanted to lay out the fabric with the sleeves matching the body I probably wouldn't have been able to. When I was laying out the pattern I was aware of the designs on this fabric. You can't see it but there's a boob-sized circle with a "B" in it that was in danger of being in the wrong place. But despite my ability to keep the circle away, I end up with an arrow, which I didn't see because it was on the bottom piece of fabric. I also don't like the way the top designs slope. It looks like I cut the fabric off-grain, or that I'm standing crooked. It's not off-grain. You can see that the lower designs are horizontal.

So I'm disappointed and not sure I'm going to wear it. Or am I just being silly? If I were twenty years younger maybe I would want to advertise where my boobs are located. And I suppose I wouldn't mind the slightly off-kilter look. This was a very inexpensive fabric from Hancock so I'm not too upset. It's a nice knit but I intended it to be a (hopefully) wearable muslin. I'm in the midst of sewing another one out of a luscious red cotton/rayon knit from Britex. By the way, this cotton/rayon was the third fabric that I couldn't remember I bought from Britex. I thought I bought this knit from Stretch 'n Sew because I was looking at the red knits there, which are also nice, but didn't contain rayon.

I don't think I would buy this in RTW simply because of the fabric placement. But it fits great!

More, more, more...

After finishing the blue knit hoodie, I started right in on more projects. So far I've traced two patterns and washed one of the fabrics. But I just haven't made enough time in the evening to work on them.

The next project will be the Jalie 2449 crossover top in a fairly vibrant and wild orange/red/black "graffiti" printed stretch knit that I purchased at Hancock Fabrics. If the pattern fits right I plan to make another version of it in a red knit to go with this skirt that I made last summer and haven't worn yet.

I also traced off this blouse from the May 2006 Burda magazine:

I'm hoping to squeeze the blouse out of a little over a yard of 58" wide fabric and either make the ties out of something else or see if I can use the selvedge instead of making the ties on the bias. I'm not sure it'll be possible but I'll see. I'll also have to make a muslin first because I'm sure I'll have to tweak the fit.