No, this is not a post regarding tips and tricks for home canning, nor does it contain recipes. So, why am I writing it? Because it's important to me food-wise. That picture right there was my very first time ever canning anything. Wahoo! Go me!
Being a Southerner it's considered a faux pas that I don't know how to can and I'm almost 40. It's also a faux pas that I don't garden, but we'll get to that in a minute. Canning though, I've always wanted to learn. My paternal grandparents did this, canning everything they grew in their gardens. Even my former employer, an elderly lady that I cleaned house for, had learned to can in home-ec class in the 1940s. Though she didn't do it anymore by the time I was her house keeper, she did implement this skill throughout life. I actually do not know if my maternal grandmother did this. Canning does seem to be more of a Southern thing than a Yankee thing. I'm not saying that it's strictly reserved for us Southerners, it just seems that we're more into it. But, she did live through two World Wars, lived through rationing, and moved to the south in the early 1940s, so it's not impossible. I know she had a huge copper tub to put on the stove to boil laundry in (yes, she was that old). She used it until the 1950s when my maternal grandfather bought her a washing machine. We even have it now. But canning? I'm just not certain & though it's certainly plausible and possible, I don't think she did. So, when dad asked me, "You wanna help me put up some pickles?" on Monday, I said yes. He usually asks when I'm busy and I don't have the hours to do all it takes, because it's an on his schedule sort of deal, not when we can get together for the project. I've been around canning my whole life, however I only ever saw my paternal grandmother's finished products. "This is everything I put up since you were last here." or "Check in the fridge, there's some Muscadine Jelly for you." or "Look at my Strawberry Preserves? Pretty, ahn?" But I'd seen The Sister and dad working away with the jars and the water bath and hearing the cooling can lids snick into a seal. This time I went over the directions, double checked them with dad, then he talked some throwing out tips and tricks or what "mama" would do, helped cut the cucumbers and pack the jars, but left it all up to me. And bada-bing bada-boom I canned all the pickles myself! I wish we'd followed his moms recipe, but this was his project at the start, he just let me take the reins, and since he was just following the recipe on the pack of the Ball canning pack (with his tried additions of red pepper flakes, fresh garlic, and some extra additions of crispy granules), then that's just what we followed. The year he got the recipe from her and canned pickles following it; those were some damn good pickles, man. I like what we made, the spicy dill (even the spicy sweet he made last year were really good - and I don't like sweet pickles), but for a Plain Jane, no frills dill pickle, grandma's were perfection. Now I'm wishing she were alive so I could ask her if this was her mom's recipe, one she perfected, if she got it from a neighbour or is it merely the Nestle Tollhouse cookies of pickle recipes? Not that I'd be disappointed in any answer, because I'm cool with brand name circulated recipes if they're good. But, I'll never know. But she would be happy to know that we thought her pickles were perfection. I think she'd be happy to know that I was finally canning. I think she was there in a way. I think both her and my grandpa were there in a way. It felt like when I made that pie crust for that baking challenge and I could feel my maternal grandmother, the pie dough wiz, standing right next to me beaming with pride. The dead probably don't care, nor come to check in, nor are they likely to be drawn back to loved ones because of certain things, but it didn't feel like it was just me alone in that kitchen rolling out perfect pie dough (which I was rubbish at before that day) or that it was just me and dad on Monday. People can make of it what they will, but it comforts me to think they were there and it doesn't do any harm to anyone.
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