Canning

Happy Birthday Mom! This post's for you (sorry I'm late!)

Last week I did my Flashback Friday post about picking peaches. (OK it was on Saturday... as least I'm making an effort) Today I will share with you .... (drum roll please) ....the rest of the story.

Summers at the Burton home meant canning. I really don't know how my mom did it - or maybe why I never got my kids to do it - maybe we didn't have the option when I was a kid .... anyway, back to the story. In our home everyone helped and it didn't seem too much like work, at least to me.

We canned peaches and apple pie filling. We made strawberry and peach freezer jam. I remember mashing the strawberries with a potato masher, making sure we left chunks of strawberries and stirring in the sugar (always less than the recipe called for) and then stirring and stirring the pectin until the timer rang. I loved peeling the peaches. After dipping them in the boiling water bath the skins just slipped off and the fruit was smooth and still had a bit of a blush sun tan on it. I loved the way you could cup the peach in your hand, slice to the pit and then with you thumb make all the slices fall off the pit. We peeled the apples by hand. We would sit in the kitchen around the garbage can and see who could peel their apple in the single longest length of peel or have contests to see who was the fastest. I remember
stirring apricot and plum jam on the stove watching for the foam to form on top. My mom would scrape the foam off the top and let us eat it - Yum? I'm not sure I would enjoy it as much today...

There was something very satisfying all year long about eating a piece of apple pie or savoring the freezer jam on ice cream or fresh bread and knowing that you had a hand in making it. I'm afraid I have not done a good job at handing down this tradition or skills to my children... Maybe we will have to do peaches this year... any takers?