Comments on: 03/31/14 – Putting Up

By: Arkanabar

Arkanabar — Wed, 02 Apr 2014 12:39:02 +0000

Joyce, I am holding in my hand a quart jar of Smokey Mountain Hot Chow Chow, canned in Asheville, NC. Ingredients: Peppers, Cabbage, Onions, Vinegar, Spices. But I suspect you can find SOMEBODY who’ll ship it to you with enough searching. Or a whole lot of recipes, if you feel industrious. Or both.

By: Joyce Melton

Joyce Melton — Tue, 01 Apr 2014 05:42:08 +0000

We did a lot of canning when I was growing up. My favorite canned food that I can’t get anymore was green tomato relish which we called chow-chow. Another was seven day pickles which were treated with pickling lime for three days then soaked and washed each day for four to get all the lime out. The hardest thing we ever tried to can was making our own ketchup. Everything else was pretty easily done but ketchup is difficult. We finally came up with a version that was sweetened with apples and thickened with corn starch. Pickled okra is just gross, though.

By: reynard61

reynard61 — Tue, 01 Apr 2014 03:49:27 +0000

When my family lived on a farm during Summer in the late 1970s, my mom did a bunch of canning on an old wood stove. (The gas stove was for regular meals.) Unfortunately I was tasked with chopping all the wood to keep it fired up. It didn’t help matters that she had underestimated both the amount of wood that she’d need (I eventually was forced to cut trees from the treeline partway up the side of a small hill adjoining the property), and how fast my axes (one for cutting, one for splitting) would wear out. (I had asked her for a sledgehammer and splitting wedges but the splitting axe alone was cheaper.) Needless to say, I’m inclined to leave canning to others…

By: War Pig

War Pig — Mon, 31 Mar 2014 07:54:38 +0000

We can at my place to preserve what we grow. We cannot possibly eat all the corn, tomatoes. berries, carrots, melons, etc that we grow before they go bad. Eat what you can and preserve the rest. Besides I love to make jams and jellies. Grandma would can or pickle anything that stood still long enough to catch so we kids kept on the move. Her bread & butter pickles were divine. Canning and pickling were also ways to stave off scurvy in wintertime in olden days.