The Tilsons

Here it is, in all its bountiful, abundant and colour saturated glory.

In total there are approximately 1000 lbs of fruit dangling off of the wall in our appartment pantry. Since our big stock arrived, Justin and I (and mom) have canned the beets from the garden (about 60 lbs). Then of course there are the 30 or so lbs of Green Beans and the Apple Jelly. I love that the shelves are so full that I can’t squeeze it all inside the viewfinder of the camera.

I wish we could have had more photos, I wish we had the energy to blog while the whole thing was in motion.

Now that I got that out, I wouldn’t go back and change a thing! We all learned so much about community, stamina, patience, food, canning, love and happiness. Thank you my love - Justin, Matt, Larry, Josh, Byron and Alanna - our neighbors, Deb - for her charitable work with food, Hart - The Camera Guy for discovering the meaning of teamwork with us and Galeet, his wife, for her patience with the underpaid film industry, my Mom for teaching us how to can and finishing the last of it with me. Thank you to the folks who find us on the web and comment or even just watch from the shadows. (I have stats, I know just how many people are out there!) Your comments keep us writing.

We’ll let you know when we are up and live on YouTube with our short.

Infinite love and blessings,

The Tilsons

Today we realized the magnitude of our decision to order such a gargantuan amount of food.  Food of this quantity needs jars, lids, screw bands, TIME, PATIENCE…and if you are going to can a crazy amount of food - like say 800 lbs, do yourself a favour and buy a propane tank, a large burner and the biggest pressure canner you can buy (ours actually fits 26 pints and 18 quarts).

I figured you all should have a leg up if you’ve made the same commitment we have.  Here is a post of all the helpful canning tips and hints we could think of, so that you could breeze through your canning experience instead of barricading yourself in the kitchen and screaming at the top of your lungs while your husband and roommate cower in the corner. Read the complete Post.

*Due to a complete lack of energy, the “Fruitapoluza ‘08″ posts have been dated retrospectively.  We appologize for any blogging rules we may be breaking at this time and assume no responsibility for injuries incurred while attempting to “catch up” all at once.

The great canning adventure began with Justin and I poring over a freshly posted ad on Craigslist, stating that a woman from somewhere was going up to the Okanogan and could get fruit of all kinds for anyone who needed it (Peaches, Pears, Plumbs, Tomatos, Apples).  Being that our food outside was staying green, due to the global warming of Vancouver, we decided in a fit of insanity, to STOCK UP.

100 lbs of Plums
250 lbs of Tomatos
200 lbs of Peaches
200 lbs of Apples
150 lbs of Pears… or something like that. Read the complete Post.

Like Dilly Beans, but with a T.

1. Pack 7 jars of beans, any colour, washed, ends trimmed. This will ad up to 6 when cooked.
2. Bring to a boil

   3 C Water

   3 C Vinegar (5% acid)

   3 T Canning Salt

1. Wash pint size canning jars and put in each jar

   1 clove garlic

   3-4 pepper corns

   pinch red pepper flakes

   heaping 1/4 tsp dill

1. Put the beans in the vinegar mix (brine) and bring back to a boil.
2. Pull the beans out, pack into jars and top with brine (to 1/2 inch from top), releasing any bubbles.
3. Wipe the jar, place lid on and screw top.
4. Process for 10 minutes in boiling canner bath.
5. Remove from canner, allow to cool and remove screw tops.
6. Serve after refrigerated. (best after 4 weeks of sitting)

We have canned the last of the harvest this year, and what a harvest it has been: peaches, pears, tomatoes, beets and finally apples (the last still yet to finish dehydrating). I have learned how incredible it is to eat food when it is in season and produced by local farmers, and how satisfying it is to harvest food right out of our garden and onto our plates.

If there is one single influence that I can credit my new found compulsion to eat local, in season food, it would be Barbara Kingsolver’s book “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle“. In her book she and her family describe their experience as homesteaders making the commitment to eat locally for one full year. Aside from inspiring words, she includes fabulous recipes including the tomato sauce recipe I canned this year. This quote from the bottom of page thirty one, describes exactly what it is like to eat out of season food.

The main barrier standing between ourselves and a local food-culture is not the price, but attitude. The most difficult requirements are patience and a pinch of restraint - virtues that are hardly the property of the wealthy. These virtues seem to find precious little shelter, in fact, in any modern quarter of this nation founded by Puritans. Furthermore, we apply them selectively: browbeating our teenagers with the message that they should wait for sex, for example. Only if they wait to experience intercourse under the ideal circumstances (the story goes) will they know its true value. “Blah blah blah,” hears the teenager: words issuing from a mouth that can’t even wait for the right time to eat tomatoes, but instead consumes tasteless ones all winter to satisfy a craving for everything now. We’re raising our children on the definition of promiscuity if we feed them a casual, indiscriminate mingling of foods from every season plucked from the supermarket, ignoring how our sustenance is cheapened by wholesale desires.

How, after reading that, can one go on to eat wilted asperagus at Thanksgiving, or apples in the middle of June? The honest truth is that out of season food flown, shipped or driven from all over the continent arrives on my plate tasting like crap. It is normally pumped full of who knows what’s DNA so that it at least resembles what its in season counterpart looks like. Why would I want that in my body! I don’t want my children to grow up in this new pattern of seasonal disorientation. I resolve to know what I’m missing - who grows when and how to cook it.

I’ve included a photo of our full pantry - read the book, get inspired to eat a little closer to the season.

Last year I canned beet pickles and peaches on the same weekend with my mom, which was insane; by 11pm we were into the Irish Cream to spare each other from each other. This year I decided it would be a good idea to can tomatoes and pears on the same weekend. Not only that, but make two different kinds of pears (canned quarters and pear butter) and two different kinds of tomatoes (tomato sauce and canned tomato quarters), by myself for the most part (thank you Justin for stepping in when it got tough) This all not taking into consideration that I woke up a bit sick on Friday, with some strange neck pain (resistance to canning?), that Justin had fat that had to be made into soap this weekend and that we had dinner invites coming, that we prepared dinner for unwittingly on the wrong night.

So, the tomatoes. They were ripe first, so as per the recipe I sorted thirty pounds of the ripest ones out to be blanched, peeled, cored, cooked and strained into puré. Little did I know, that I would be 2 quarts short of what the recipe called for when I measured after this long process. As the rest of the tomatoes were not ripe enough to be done, I pillaged our garden for 15 more pounds of tomatoes, and started again. Finally, after another round, enough puré was in the pot to be made into sauce and canned.

Then pears. Pears are slightly more work because their skins don’t just fall off like peaches or tomatoes. You actually have to hand peel them! So, I sorted about 3/4 of the pears out to be washed, peeled, quartered and canned. That whole process went rather well, albeit long, especially after the tomatoe sauce.  The pear butter went well also, however, the butter takes a long, long time to thicken, drawing out the day, into the evening and then long into the night.

Next, the canned tomatoes. Beth came over sunday evening and we prepared them together, just as I did with the tomatoe sauce tomatoes. That was my first mistake. Apparently one is only supposed to pepare one quarts tomatoes at a time, this resulted in the tomates going bad in the fridge overnight because I was too tired and frustrated with my third mistake to finish. My second mistake was not having an up to date canning book. I found out fairly late in the game that instead of being processed for 40 mins like my mom used to in the 80’s, one is supposed to process them for 85 mins! I learned this just in time. My third mistake was that my mom’s, or possibly my grammas old jars stuck out of the water a wee bit. I figured that would be fine, being that my mom had canned with them, but no, after about 70 mins in the hot bath, the tops exploded right off and sprayed tomatoe sauce all over my walls, blowing the lid clear off of the pot!  At that point, it was midnight, I decided that a fourth mistake was too much, so I wrapped things up and hit the hay.  (Only to wake up in the morning to find that some of my pre prepared tomates had molded in the night)

Take it from me, two foods in one weekend is not a good idea if you want to do it right and have any patience left for anything. On the other hand, I am really happy with having it all done and in the pantry. To help for the next round, I have bought Bernardin’s latest edition of proper canning methods, hopefully I won’t have to learn the hard way all the time.

I also strongly recomend, that if you are canning by yourself, have an audiobook plugged in. Barbara Kingsolver’s Prodigal Summer was my book of choice for this canning project, it was very inspiring and kept my mind off of the back pain!

Yesterday and today my mom and I canned peaches… millions of peaches! Actually, only about 60 lbs. We grossed about 33 quarts and two batches of jam from local BC Okanagen peaches and honey because organic has been too expensive to can. It took us a while to get a system down, but by this morning we were very efficient and tidy. Now that we have figured out the process, I can’t wait for beets and pears to ripen!!!
I’m lucky because my mom canned for quite a few years when I was younger, and my grandma was quite the homemaker as well. My mom has passed on dozens of quart and pint jars and all her canning tools to me, which makes getting into the game easy. Its interesting to see how the instruments have evolved through the generations by looking at some of my grandmas canning jars, with parafin wax sealing for preserves, rubber rings and glass lids to our rubber rimmed lids and rims that we use today.
This round we tried to seal the preserves with wax, but realized shortly after that it is no longer recomended due to the improper seal the wax tends to make. Obviously we did it wrong when we noticed the juice seaping out the top of the wax! Oh well, I guess we will just have to eat it!
We used a preserve recipe that called for honey instead of sugar, but unfortunately it didn’t set - we will continue our search for a local way to make jam!