You’ve heard the most delightful sound in the kitchen – the popping of lids fresh from the canner – and your jars are completely cooled. Now what? Prepare Jars for Storage Remove the rings and wipe down the outside of the jar with a warm wet cloth or sponge. Often a bit of juice, brine or jam escapes during the vacuum process. Being outside the seal, this can spoil and rust the lids. Wash the [...]

Do you ever come home to an empty fridge but still want something delicious to eat? We recently returned from the Mid Atlantic coast. Without time for a trip to the grocery store, I wanted a simple healthy meal we could make from pantry ingredients. Knowing that we had plenty of home canned tomatoes in the larder, I invented this recipe for tomato soup and served it with toasted cheese. This tomato soup is made [...]

Today we ate our last winter squash harvested over six months ago.  It was bitter and I’m sad about that. I wondered exactly what is left in our larder.  Here’s the count as of March 9, 2010: 8.5 quarts applesauce 10 half pints tomato paste 3 quarts tomato sauce 12 quarts whole tomatoes 2 half pints ketchup 3 quarts barbeque sauce 3 pints honey strawberry jam 1 pint peach jam 2 bags frozen blueberries (maybe [...]

There are inches of snow on the ground and inches more to come.  I am bored with winter vegetables and itching to get in the garden.  Solution?  Rob the larder. I have serious love for the word larder.  Isn’t it fantastic? This summer I canned tomatoes, applesauce, barbecue sauce, peach jam, strawberry jam, ketchup and tomato paste.  It was hours of work to pick and process all these treasures.  The matching little jars have laid [...]