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Using Your Jar Lifter Properly

During last week’s canning workshop, I learned that all along I had been using my jar lifter wrong! Basically, I’d been using it backwards – using the black roller handles to grip the jars… which was always a bit precarious in hindsight. Here’s the way I was using it:

wrong way to use a jar lifter
Wrong way to use the jar lifter (it's upside down)

And here’s the proper way to use it:

right way to use a jar lifter
The right way to use the jar lifter

It makes sense to use it this way, because the red parts grip better, so there’s less chance to drop the jar. And they are curved to better fit the jars. I’m going to use my jar lifters properly this year, which I expect will make the process quite a bit easier.

And as far as the confusion as to which side is the handle and which is the gripper, I’ve learned that I am not alone in this respect… many thanks to AJ for setting me straight.

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Upcoming Talk About Food Preservation

I love to teach, am fascinated by different food preservation techniques, so I’m really happy to be giving at talk this weekend for the Kensington/Windsor Terrace CSA about food preservation!  This is a closed event, but I’m thrilled to let it out and off to the universe, as I’d love to lead more educational opportunities in my lifetime.

As a fellow CSA member, I know how overwhelming shares can be at times, and depending on how busy you are in any particular week, it’s easy to let the food go and eventually dissolve into a puddle of goo (believe me, I’ve seen enough of it over the years in the bottom of my crisper drawer).  As time has gone by, I’ve found various ways of preserving my food, and each technique has its own benefits.  I’m particularly enamored with the preservation method that actually boosts the nutrition in the food – lacto-fermentation.

I’ll be talking about the most accessible ways to preserve food: freezing, pickling, lacto-fermentation, dehydrating, water bath canning… and one special preservation process that I think its pretty cool and that I only learned about a year or so ago.  I’ll reveal that next week.

Anyway, yes – really excited to be doing this talk!  Special thanks for my friend Serita for helping set this up and to Charlene for overall encouragement.

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What’s New

Yellow Pear Tomato

So, what’s new:

As you can see from the picture above, my yellow pear tomatoes have started to ripen!  They are a little funny looking, kind of like bowling pins, and they are very tasty. My plant keeps producing them, even as most of my other tomato plants are on their way out.

My paste tomatoes suffered from a lot of blossom end rot, but not nearly as bad as the Prudens Purple.  The mystery volunteer tomato did fine, as did the Silver Fir.  Both of those plants produced small to medium sized fruit. Larger tomatoes just had problems this year.

I had a bumper crop of lemon cucumbers, too.  I will definitely grow those again next year.

Soon, it will be time to pull up the tomato plants and consider what to grow for the fall.  I like the idea of carrots especially, and some more tatsoi.

Apart from the garden, I’ve done a lot of canning.  I made 6 half pints of fig-orange-honey preserves, which turned out great, and keeps getting better as it ages.   The figs came from the backyard trees – can’t get more local than that!

I’ve also canned tomatoes and made salsa – 9 pints of crushed tomatoes, and 4 pints of salsa, 3 of which are lacto-fermented salsa. The tomatoes came from my CSA in the form of a 20 pound tomato share, and were fabulous – really healthy, firm, and meaty.  Not to mention tasty.

I have a lot of nectarines and peaches, so I may make preserves out of that as well.

My social life ramped up for a little while, and that meant dinners out, and less cooking at home.  I’ve also been sick, so little appetite.  This will all change soon.

This weekend I pick up my salmon share! Very exciting!!

More soon!