If walls could talk, they would tell you of the big copper water bath canner on Mom's stove, the Kerr lids and Mason glass jars and gold rings that would tighten the lids to seal the food. Those walls could tell you how Grandma Ollie, my aunts Esther and Elsie (sometimes), and Mom and I would sit at the kitchen table with a large granite pan filled with apples we'd cut and core, slice through a few times, and slide into another large pan filled with slightly salted water to keep them from turning brown.
Many hands make light work. Soon the pan in the middle of the table was filled with cut apples waiting to be cooked. Mom scooped them out with her hands and put them into a big kettle with some water to cook to a soft consistency. We had a large food mill with a crank handle and large hopper on top. Mom fastened this to the side of the table and put another large pan under the chute to catch the applesauce when it was "worked through", as we termed it. She watched the cooking apples closely, and as soon as they were soft, she carried the steaming kettle from the stove and set it on a hot pad on the table near the food mill. With a large dipper, she ladled the hot apples into the food mill; I often turned the crank. I can still see the steaming applesauce running down the chute into the waiting granite pan, and smell the wonderful smell of freshly cooked apples!
When the pan was full of sauce, Mom would add sugar to taste. After that we'd ladle it into glass quart jars. To seal the jar, we first heated the Kerr lids in a small saucepan of water to soften the rubber part, wipe the top of the jars clean, set a Kerr lid one at a time on each jar, and screw on a gold tightening ring. Next the jars were put into the copper canner (there was a wooden rack in the bottom to keep the jars from sitting directly on the botton). Enough water was added to bring the level up to the neck of the jars. (Maybe that's where the saying, "Up to my neck in hot water" comes from.) :o) This process is called a water bath, and the water had to come to a rolling boil, after which the heat was turned off and the jars sat in the hot water for twenty minutes. Mom used a jar lifter to carefully lift each jar out and place them on an old tablecloth folded in quarters for thickness, and left to cool away from air drafts. Those kitchen walls could tell you of the satisfactory sounds of lids snapping as each one sealed.
Golden sweet peaches and juicy white pears were carefully peeled and cut, then packed, cut side down all around the inside of the jar so it would look pretty. We made a syrup of water and sugar to pour over the fruit before sealing and putting them in the water bath for twenty minutes like the applesauce.
We used the same process for making tomato juice, except we just washed and cut up the tomatoes right into kettles they would be cooked in and added a little water. We made lots of tomato juice. We made red beet and cucumber pickles by hot water bath method as well. We canned chunk tomatoes open kettle, which meant that tomatoes boiling in a kettle were quickly ladled into waiting jars and sealed by turning the lids tightly and setting them aside to cool. That works for tomato juice too.
Green beans were washed, snipped and packed tightly into jars; one teaspoon salt went into each jar, then it was filled with water and lids screwed on as for the applesauce. Three hours after coming to a boil, the green beans were done and lifted from the copper water bath canner and set out to cool. Sometimes we used the pressure canner for the green beans to save time, but I was always a bit leery of that piece of kitchen equipment. One had to be very careful.
Corn from our "truck patch" was harvested early in the morning, husked immediately, cooked, cooled in large tubs of ice water, then cut off and cobs scraped clean into large granite pans. We froze this corn in quart plastic boxes and took it to Yoder's Locker Plant in Grantsville, MD, where my parents rented a freezer locker. We didn't have a freezer in our home. I can still taste that superb Iochief corn; I have not found any corn to compare to it!
And how could I forget the large quantity of vegetable soup we made at end of summer? I can still see the rows of vegetable soup on the large shelves in our basement, along with all the fruits of our labors from the summer: rows and rows of colorful fruits and vegetables that would feed hungry mouths come winter.
With the kitchen window open to let in cooling breezes, we gave many a story to those kitchen walls as the womenfolk in my family worked and bonded together with love and good will.
Now, with a sad feeling in the pit of my stomach and tears filling my eyes, I know I shall never have those days again. But the memories of those days are etched on the walls of my heart forever!
Copyright © 2012 Elaine Beachy
No comments:
Post a Comment