Music and Cats

When I made a third batch of bread and butter pickles last week, I emptied the second (or was it the third?) 10-pound bag of sugar that I’ve bought this summer. I also bought another box of canning jars into which to put those pickles, though I had purchased three 12-count boxes at the beginning of the summer. Those 36 jars had all been filled; some I had moved to shelves in our basement, others I’d nestled back in their boxes, which sat on the kitchen table. It occurred to me, as I ladled hot, vinegary cucumber slices into hot glass, that I didn’t really know how many jars of preserves I had in the house. It was time, I decided, to do an inventory.

First, I moved all of the jars into the jam and wine cellar area of our basement. My, there are a lot of them! Then I brought Paul’s laptop down - the shiny white of his iBook looking oddly out of place amid the 98-year-old wood stacked with jewel-toned jars - and opened a fresh spreadsheet. Half an hour of sorting and typing later, I had finished.

In my basement are one hundred seventeen (117) jars of homemade preserves. Jams, fruit butters and sauces, chutneys and pickles fill 49 half-pint, 31 12-ounce and 37 pint jars. That’s over 10 1/2 gallons of preserved food! Gallons!

(I have yet to buy a box of quart canning jars. Those jars are dangerous. They are for serious canning - not condiments and desserts, but real food. Have I mentioned that my cellar is beginning to remind me of the cellar of a survivalist family that I once saw on a documentary? They had, as well as small jars of preserves, rows of quart jars filled with fruits and vegetables. They also had lots of guns and a generator, but that’s beside the point. No quart jars for me.)

Since we’re talking inventory, here’s what’s in all of those jars in our cellar:
bread & butter pickles
tomato apple chutney
blueberry chutney
apricot butter
brandied apricot jam
gingered apricot jam
apricot chutney
cherries in almond syrup
brandied cherry sauce
seville orange marmalade (both thick and thicker cut)
cranberry almond conserve
gingered pear sauce
curried apple chutney

If you are part of my family (by blood or by choice), you now have a list from which to guess what you’re getting for Christmas. (Requests will be considered.)

I also have a “clearance list,” consisting of a few jars from last summer’s canning that have not yet been consumed: brandied peach preserves, orange brandied peach preserves, peach melba jam, and brandied apricots. These preserves need to go to into willing bellies soon. Send me an address, and they’re yours.

Here’s one thing I know: if the economy were to collapse this winter, and foodstuffs became difficult to acquire, Paul and I would not want for sugar. And that’s a good thing… isn’t it?

Tags: 6 Comments