Yeah, the title is corny but it's in kudos to all the silly sci fi people out there (that includes me).
I noticed last night that I had a follower! I am psyched! And it is appropriate that that follower is Chris Norris, who was the person who taught me how to can. Chris and I met in high school and I kept in touch with her when she moved to Brigham City, Utah during senior year. When I needed a place to flee to from Florida in 1988 (another long story in its entirety) she and her new husband opened their tiny apartment to me until I could get on my feet. Armed with nothing but some clothes, $20, some kitchen equipment that was shipped previously and my parent's old 1958 Remington Easy Writer typewriter, I arrived at the Salt Lake City Airport on November 19, 1988. Chris picked me up from the airport and off we went, driving through the first snow of winter and the first snow I had seen since I was a child.
At any rate, we drove back to the apartment in Riverdale (where I met her now late ex-husband Jeff for the first time) and after catching up and shown my room, we unpacked the few boxes I had shipped. In one of these boxes was a large pot I primarily used for cooking soup- an old, huge aluminum pot that had this weird rack in it. I had purchased it at Al's Other Market in Vero Beach, Florida in 1987 specifically because it could cook soup for an army and I asked the woman behind the counter what the rack was for.
"I don't know," was her answer.
We looked at it together. I toyed with the idea of leaving the rack behind but decided not to- it came with the pot and at some point, I figured, I'd figure out what it was for. I paid the $3.99 for it and went home. Before it was shipped to Utah, it was used for the aforementioned soup (I was a nanny at the time and thought the kids should have homemade soup, as well as bread and other items) and on one notable occasion it was used by my roommate's Arab boyfriend to make Kepsah (a really delicious chicken and rice dish). He burned the bottom, but nothing that couldn't be fixed.
So, we opened the box and out came the pot, rack and all. I really don't remember Chris' reaction but I believe she was stunned. I would like to think she was stunned at any rate as here was this doohickey naive suburban girl from resort city Florida sitting in her apartment in Utah with a canning pot and she had no clue WHAT she had in her hands. During the ensuing conversation she advised me that this was a canning pot. And explained what canning was. I think my reaction was, "oh, okay then" and that was that.
I don't know how all the canning stuff started, really. I do know that Chris was involved, I was interested, and when they moved back to Brigham City (after Jeff's stint in the military) I spent a LOT of time up there canning, freezing, and drying (which is the title of my favorite canning book by the way). One notorious summer when Chris and I were on furlough from IRS we spent almost the entire summer canning. Bushels of tomatoes, peaches, salsa... We also found a great deal on broccoli at a mark down market ($1 a case) and spent almost 48 hours straight freezing it! I miss Utah and its abundance of available food and great deals, neighbors who say "Hey, come get this or it's going to waste!" and the one empty lot next door to my tiny rented house in Ogden that had an apricot tree to die for. When the apricots were on I was in my (very distant) cousin Linda Henrie's kitchen, helping her put all of these up. Yum!
At any rate, when my soujourn to Utah was done, I had collected another canning pot and a ton of jars and everyone of them came with me to Florida. I probably didn't need to as I had forgotten that my grandfather used to make pickles. When I finally got around to cleaning out the garage with my mother after my grandmother died, we discovered CASES. And some of his old pickles. Needless to say, those were emptied rather quickly as he'd died in 1983.
Due to one thing or another I didn't really start canning again until 2008. I was rather amazed- I had found a recipe for banana butter online and went to town. I have been making it and banana hybrid jams ever since. And loving it.
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