My part of Southern Ontario is the southern most point of Canada, which generally means shorter winters (shorter than Thunder Bay) and fairly warm summers. Here in the Windsor area, the weather is pretty much the same as the Detroit area. Hot, humid summers are the norm.
This weather gives us an abundance of fresh produce. A few years ago, a girl friend and I decided that we would try our hand at canning fresh tomatoes. Her garden was over flowing and Leamington (about 45 minutes from here) is the tomato capital of Canada. We had no clue what we were doing, but we are both fairly literate and can follow simple directions from a recipe. The endeavor turned out perfectly, the jars sealed, and we celebrated the sealed jars with a toast of whatever wine she had leftover in the fridge. The fresh canned tomatoes provided homemade pasta sauce all winter long. Since then, we have preserved a variety of fresh fruits and vegetables.
Today, we continued the tradition and made strawberry jam and strawberry-rhubarb jam. We started with eight quarts of locally grown strawberries and fresh rhubarb from her garden and ended up with over 20 pints of homemade jam. Later this week, we'll tackle cherry jam for the first time. Plus, we'll experiment just a little. She had purchased a jar of "black forest jam" from a street fair and it was quite delicious. We'll try our own version by adding and ounce of dark chocolate per quart of cherries. I'll let you know how it turns out.
8 comments:
Hi Toni, That jam sounds mighty good. We've already got tomatoes on the vine, I'll have to think about doing some canning.
Hi Toni.
I can remember my Grandmother canning just about everything. She had some of the best preserves. I think my favorite of hers was fig preserves. There was a fig tree in her back yard, and I can remember her complaining that either the birds or the grandchildren would get all the figs before she had a chance to can them. :)
Good luck on the new experiment.
Hi boran,
I've got three tomato plants in containers. All the rain we've had has caused them to just take off. They are beginning to get blossoms.
Have you had much rain?
Good morning FM.
From the time on your comment, it looks like another sleepless night - sorry.
Fresh fig preserve sounds divine. Have you ever tried to make it yourself?
Hi again Toni.
Yep it was one of those sleepless nights again, but I did get a heck of a lot of cleaning done in the house.
Back when I was getting into cooking I never tried to can anything. I think I was a little scared of doing it because you had to make sure everything was sterilized and all the different steps. Being the slacker I am, that was too much work. :)
I'll tell ya what though. Grandma's fresh fig preserves were divine. :O
Hope you're have a good Sunday.
Have we had much rain?!! It rained twice yesterday and again today. It's rained every day for the past week or more. I've actually googled plans for an ark. ;-)
Hey Toni,
I picked tomatoes right in that area. I picked in Blenhiem near Chatam. I also picked tobacco near Delhi, Teeterville, & as far up as Thetford. Mostly it was leaf tobacco, but after the frost I`d do the briar.
Those were in my migrant worker days. A hard life, but a great schooling. I still love tomatoes, & canned fruit is always special. I`m glad you can.
Knucklehead,
I can't imagine stooping to pick tomatoes all day. Whenever I think about migrant work, I can't help but think about The Grapes of Wrath.
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