Our Potomac Vegetable Farms CSA bag was full of ripe summer tomatoes last week, after a slow and soggy start to tomato season here in Virginia. Unfortunately, we were leaving town the day after our pick-up. Of course, that was also the day we got the notice that the boxes of surplus canning tomatoes were available, and I was feeling panicked at the thought of not putting up tomatoes this year and faced with a pile of tomatoes we certainly wouldn’t be able to finish before leaving. I had recently seen a recipe for tomato jam and decided that was the perfect project for the night as it mainly involves simmering on the stove for a couple hours, giving me time to pack. A huge thunderstorm kept the boy awake so I put him to work slicing up the excess cherry tomatoes we also needed to use up. (Using a kid-safe knife, of course.)

I made slight alterations, using turbinado sugar and a touch of honey and a splash of Virginia’s North Gate Petit Verdot that was also in need of using up. (Not that I couldn’t have used a glass or two, but it would’ve made it even less likely that I would get all our luggage packed that night.)

For the recipe, see: Tomato Onion Jam by Jennifer Perillo/Tasty Kitchen. My alterations: 1 1/2 cup raw (turbinado sugar) and 1/4 cup raw honey, omit the brown sugar. Add 2 tablespoons red wine in lieu of lemon juice.

This weekend was the Canvolution kick-off — a nationwide effort to restore the art of preserving food, launched by former Washington Post blogger Kim O’Donnel and a host of other food writers and bloggers. Visit the Canning Across America website for a host of canning resources and advice, particularly this great article on canning with kids.

The highlight of my first mother-son canning experiment was seeing the pride in my son’s eyes as he handed his aunt and grandma their jar of jam, declaring, “I made this myself!”

What have you canned lately?

After conquering my fear of canning, the next item on my kitchen project list was making jam. I had recently stumbled across this lovely Green Gage Plum & Vanilla Jam recipe at Chez Pim which sounded simple enough. I had some green Shiro plums and Italian prune plums to work with. I really wanted to use honey, but I’ve read that you can only substitute honey for half of the sugar in a recipe, and didn’t want to stray too far from the original recipe since this was my first jam-making experience. I also had fewer plums than originally purchased, thanks to a toddler who was downing up to 6 a day…

So, my recipe quantities were: 1 lb plums, scant 1 c sugar, 1 T lemon juice, 1 T honey, 1 vanilla bean. I followed the original instructions and got a nice, thick jam, but I wasn’t sure what to do about the peels. I suspect that Pim’s green gage plum skins were thinner and perhaps dissolved? The prune plum skins had not, and were tough when I tried one. I strained the cooked jam then to remove the peels, which thinned my jam a bit so I was pleased to see when I opened a jar that it was a nice, jelly-like consistency. It is quite tasty, sweet and the vanilla adds such a lovely fragrance.

Now, Pim’s recipe is for a small batch to begin with, so guess what happens when you halve that? A meager two mini jam pots…

It probably wasn’t worth processing them since one went straight into the fridge to be eaten soon, but oh well. It was part of the learning experience. I will definitely keep practicing – and reading up on jam techniques over the winter. In the meantime, head over to Lelo in Nopo and check out the yummy jams she’s been making!

Oh, and the little bit left over? Excellent topping for peach ice cream!

I may have mentioned before that peaches are my favorite summer fruit. There’s nothing better than a ripe, juicy, fresh-picked peach. (As you can see from the photo, the toddler shares my addiction.) Alas, the amazing peaches we picked in Oregon were left behind for my sister and niece to enjoy, so I’ve been left relying on my favorite market vendors. Last week, I missed out entirely at the Wednesday Upper King Street Market, where Dan from D&S sold out early. I barely made it to McLean’s Friday market before closing, and struck out again at Reid’s Orchard, though I did get a bottle of their peach nectar. Thankfully, I found a few left at Westmoreland and was finally able to make my peach swirl ice cream. While peach ice cream and cobblers (and salsa and sangria) are great, they don’t last particularly long. I have some sliced peaches in the freezer for later use, but here’s another recipe that freezes well (for a month or so) and will help you hold onto your peaches a little longer, without resorting to canning. The buckwheat flour adds a whole grain to offset some of the unhealthiness of traditional pound cake – making this perfectly acceptable as a breakfast bread. Of course, you can use whole wheat flour instead or use white flour entirely if you prefer.

Recipe: Amaretto Peach Pound Cake

Ingredients:

• 2 c peaches, finely chopped
• 1 T amaretto liquer, optional
• 1 c butter, softened
• 4 eggs
• 2 c sugar
• 1 c buckwheat flour
• 2 c unbleached flour
• 1 t vanilla extract
• 1/2 t almond extract
• 2 t baking powder
• 1/2 t salt

Instructions: Toss peaches with amaretto and let stand while preparing cake batter. Preheat over to 350 degrees and grease 2 loaf pans. Combine butter, eggs, sugar, vanilla and almond extract until smooth. Combine dry ingredients and blend into butter mixture. Fold in peaches and pour batter in loaf pans. Bake for 50 minutes, or until toothpick comes out clean. Enjoy!

Farms of Origin: This was made with my local Wye Mills buckwheat flour, Harris peaches, South Mountain butter.

I remember my mom canning when I was young, mostly applesauce and jams. It was an all-day production, at least with the applesauce, and something I never really thought to do myself. But as we’ve been savoring our local summer produce and starting to think about the long winter days just around the corner, it seemed a shame not to try and preserve at least a few jars of tomato sauce. Plus, everyone else was doing it. Our CSA farm offered up a half bushel of canning tomatoes (seconds), but it was just before the boy’s birthday party weekend and that was the last thing I had time for. When the following week’s email extended the offer for one more week, it seemed like fate. I emailed my reservation and began scouring the web for canning instructions.

Friday at lunch, I stopped by the McLean Market and then headed out to Potomac Vegetable Farms’ Vienna farmstand. The farm is located Just down the road from Tysons Corner, where the McMansions are rapidly encroaching on every available spot of green around the farm. Last year, we got a few peaches in our share from the neighboring orchard – but it has since been replaced by a new development. The farm is actually divided by the development, so our farmers have to drive their trucks through their backyards to go back and forth between the crops.

Back at home, I decided to keep things simple. I followed the crushed tomatoes recipe here, omitting the salt and adding the lemon juice per USDA recommendations, to protect against botulism. I wound up staying up late Friday night working on this as tropical storm Hanna (coincidentally the name of my tomato farmer!) was heading our way and I was afraid of losing power with pots full of sauce on the stove. Of course, the power never went out. But, while this was simpler than I had imagined, it was also time-intensive and definitely safer done after the toddler’s bedtime.

The steps are fairly straight-forward:

• wash, peel, core and quarter tomatoes (to peel, blanch in boiling water than ice bath to cool)
• bring tomatoes to boil in large pot, stirring and crushing, boil for 5 minutes
• boil jars to sterilize
• add 1 T lemon juice to each pint jar (2 T for quart jars)
• fill jars leaving 1/2 inch headroom
• top with lids and process in boiling water for 35 minutes (45 minutes for quart jars)

In the end, my 20+ pounds of tomatoes produced 8 pints jarred sauce and two more pints in the freezer, with a few pounds leftover that I made into a late summer harvest soup.

Short-Cut: If you don’t want to go through the canning process, you can freeze your cooked tomatoes in freezer bags or reusable containers. I read in several places that you still need to add lemon juice or vinegar, but if you boil your sauce before and after freezing, that should also kill pesky bacteria.

This was a fairly fool-proof recipe but I do recommend doing some reading about canning techniques before getting started. The USDA Home Canning guides are available here for further background.