Master Food Preserver

Another few weeks and Vera and I will officially be MFP's. That is, a Master Food Preserver. Vera learned about the program through her work at the University of California Cooperative Extension Office in Jackson. It’s a 10-week course that includes lectures on food borne illnesses/safety and lectures/labs on food preservation (canning, dehydrating, and freezing). Once the course is completed, tests taken (and passed), MFP volunteers are expected to teach others in the community through various educational programs (weekend food preservation workshops for the public, ongoing MFP training, etc.). Let’s just get something straight though, the “volunteer” part of our new title is a requirement of participating in the program…to the tune of 50 hours the first year. As the saying goes, there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch!

I’ve always been leery of home-canned food. In fact, more often than not when given home-canned goods over the years, I’ve discarded the contents and then given back the jar along with my compliments. I believe my skepticism goes back to childhood when I overheard my mother talking about someone who’d almost died from eating “bad” tomatoes…I now know that, more than likely, the tomatoes were home canned and inadequately processed, thus providing the perfect environment for the deadly botulinum toxin (odorless and tasteless) to grow. At the time (probably about 10 years old), I didn’t know the first thing about botulism, but the conversation set me on a life-long commitment to avoid all home-processed food. Then, last year I decided to try my hand at canning jam. From what I read, jams and jellies are low risk; although, I still proceeded cautiously. After my first experience at canning strawberry jam (and eating it and not getting sick), I enthusiastically went on to can over 200 jars of the stuff!  So, you now understand my passion for canning and excitement when I heard about the MFP program.

We spent the first two classes learning about food-borne illnesses, which go well beyond botulism (although botulism is probably the most deadly of the food pathogens). The following five classes were spent in a kitchen canning, using both the hot water bath and pressure canning techniques. Each of these lab classes included further discussion of safety and risks of improperly processing foods. Bottom line…my paranoia all these years was well founded and has not been lessened now that I’m an MFP trainee. In fact, if anything it has been exacerbated by the knowledge that there are food borne pathogenic microorganisms and natural toxins all over…we’ve just covered the most common bacteria, viruses, parasites and molds in this class. YIKES! I no longer limit my suspicious nature to home canned products, but also deli and fast food (Is it a bit unsettling when you see the sign “employees must wash there hands…” in public restrooms?)!

We’ve canned vegetables, meat (YUCK!), and jams and jellies; pickled beets, green beans, and asparagus; fermented sauerkraut. The final lab was on freezing and dehydrating. The “freezing” portion has led to an on-going spring cleaning of our two full-sized freezers. Our local food bank is always appreciative of donations, especially meat. So all is not lost! The dehydrating portion of the class was fascinating and throughout the lecture I could visualize a shelf in our pantry dedicated to all types of fruits, veggies, and herbs dehydrated and neatly stored in glass containers and our new $300 dehydrator stored next to our water bath canner and steam canner and all the canning jars and other food preservation paraphernalia I’ve acquired in recent months. (We’re beginning to run out of room in our pantry!) Actually, the $300 dehydrator was just part of my fantasy. For now, I intend to take out the dehydrator I bought at K-Mart when we first moved to Volcano in 1996…the dehydrator I used only once! Our final classes included more on safety (Make it Safe, Keep it Safe), research tools, and now we’re down to our final exam and a class demo/presentation, which Vera and I plan to do on Pie in a Jar. As she so wisely said to me…we need to play to our strengths! And, as we’ve been making rustic pies for two (and sometimes three) using our canned pie filling and frozen butter crust, this should be a perfect topic. We plan to sweeten it up a bit by taking samples for our classmates. That should definitely earn their support and positive feedback on our performance. 

Without a doubt, I’m a more knowledgeable (and safer) food processor than I was three months ago when we started the program. However…teach others? I still feel like such a novice! It’s going to take another year of some serious time in the kitchen canning, pickling, and fermenting before I’ll feel comfortable teaching others! 

Mother's Day 2014

Thanks to the occasional business trip as we get to see Jeff (and sometimes Trish) a couple of times a year when work brings him to Northern California. This past weekend they had an overnight layover in San Francisco on a company excursion in Hawaii. We met at the Union Square Hilton early afternoon and spent the balance of the day together. We set out from the hotel to walk (yes, walk…Jeff’s idea) from Union Square to the Ferry Building. Actually, it was a beautiful day and fun to get out and walk the streets of San Francisco. 

Enjoying a glass of wine at the Ferry Building...

On the return trip we wimped out and took a cab back to the hotel. The driver was of Middle Eastern descent and said little to us except to ask where we were going. In the short mile back we had three near misses (entirely due to the cabbie’s aggressive driving).  Each time he’d swerve, blast his horn, yell something unintelligible, and speed ahead to leave the dazed driver wondering what just happened. Because there were four of us, Verne took the front seat leaving Jeff, Trish, and me to exchange looks and stifle laughter (out of fear for our lives) in the back seat. The final near miss occurred as we neared the hotel speeding down an alleyway and a Smart Car pulled out in front of us. This time Verne yelled out the window at the car calling it a "Stupid Car." The cabbie laughed uncontrollably. He'd found a kindred spirit! We arrived at the hotel all laughing and Verne told the cabbie that was the best ten minutes he’d had all weekend and gave him a big tip! The three of us agreed Verne has missed his calling and should be driving a cab in the city. He’d fit right in!

Backing up a bit, Verne and I had arrived in the City early that morning and attended a Georgia O’Keeffe - Modern Nature exhibit at the deYoung Museum. It was my fourth O’Keeffe exhibit and very different from the others I’d seen as it was limited to the artist’s years at Lake George. The paintings were predominantly her study of nature and finding the essence of her subject matter to the point they became an abstraction. For example, her first painting of the flower Jack in the Pulpit began with great detail and realism, but after several renditions was simply a very stylized, abstract painting of a stamen. Apparently, she believed that she’d captured it’s essence. To be honest, I preferred the more realistic version.

After our visit to the deYoung and trip to the Ferry Building with Jeff and Trish, we returned to our rooms to catch a quick rest for our night out on the town. Oh! Did I mention our room with a view? Not just any ordinary view, but a panoramic view of downtown San Francisco from the 33^rd floor of the Hilton. It was breathtaking!

We walked to the restaurant, E&O Asian Kitchen, where we enjoyed a relaxing dinner that I can only describe as Asian Fusion. The menu included a blend of foods and flavors with Chinese, Japanese, Thai and Indian influences. Our favorite selection was the corn fritters, a signature dish since opening. Sound like something you’d find in one of our Southern states?  Not even close! It was made with whole kernals of fresh corn and minced peppers (and a few other ingredients we have yet to identify) and quickly fried to a golden brown and crunchy consistency. My description doesn't begin to do this food justice, so on your next trip to San Francisco go to the E&O and have a plateful of fritters! You won’t be sorry. Our walk back took us through Union Square...

The McKenzie’s left bright and early Monday morning for their flight to Hawaii. We took our time and decided to have breakfast at an old favorite…Bette’s Oceanside Diner on 4^th Street in Berkeley. 

It was a nice reminder of the eight years we spent visiting daughters during their college days at Berkeley. Nothing had changed including the menu, so we had our favorite, the California (Bette’s version of an Eggs Benedict).  A visit to Berkeley isn’t complete without a trip to Stonemountain. We did our usual, Verne sat in the car and smoked his pipe and read the newspaper and I fabric shopped. A perfect Mother's Day!

Surprise Visit

Maria surprised us this past weekend with a “layover” visit. She joined her best friend, Deanne, and family on a trip to Disneyland last week. Upon examining her return ticket, she noticed she had a one-hour layover in Sacramento. Hmmmm…a phone call and credit card took care of the rest. The hour delay turned into a four-day delight! (Corny? I know…sometimes I just can’t help myself!) I picked her up from the airport around noon on Saturday. We lunched at Three Sisters in Sac and then fabric shopped at the Sewing Cottage in Jackson in preparation for our weekend quilt plans. While we were running around having fun, Verne was on his way home from Cool April Nights, a car event in Redding he attends each year with his brothers. He arrived in time to share a light dinner of pickled beets (my latest canning obsession) and crostini with goat cheese and fresh basil (an old-time favorite) and talk about our day and plans for the rest of Maria's visit.

All day Sunday and until noon on Monday, Verne waited on us (he’s such a Good Man!) while we focused on Maria’s project, which was a beautiful, floral quilt for her friend’s 50^th birthday. You’ll see by the picture below that it’s near identical to the one I’d just finished for my niece. Not surprising, as they’re from the same pattern and stash of designer fabrics. We’ve already made plans to make another…this time it will be a keeper, one for each of us.

Since our Monday plans included my Master Food Preservers’ class (I’ll get to that in my next blog post), which runs from mid-afternoon until 8 p.m., Verne fixed us a hearty lunch of his homemade pizzas. Delicious! I won’t bother with detailed descriptions and pictures, as they too were identical to the three pizzas we’d made just a few weeks before (earlier blog post called Personal Pizzas). This was the fifth in the MFP series and the topic was jams and jellies. With five weeks of anticipation and having to get through two weeks of lectures on food borne illnesses and the prior week’s class on canning chicken (by far the most unappetizing product I’ve ever seen and one I will only eat if I happen to be starving and then I may just turn to cannibalism to avoid eating canned chicken!), I was prepared to be informed and inspired! Sadly, the class was a disappointment. My team made grape jelly and I will admit it tastes just like Welch's. I happen to love grape jelly. However, now that I know the ratio of sugar to grape juice is 7:5, I will never eat it again! Our second recipe was for blueberry jam and, again, it was a lopsided ratio of sugar to blueberries. Have these people (MFP educators) not heard that sugar is sweet poison ruining our health? I don’t intend to give it up completely, but I believe we should be moving from the Ball book on home canning, which was first published over a century ago, to something a bit more modern that uses less sugar and doesn’t come out of the jar resembling thick sludge or, as Verne described the texture of the blueberry jam, tar! Having said that, I own the Ball book and find it to be an excellent reference, but it is light on low-sugar jam and preserve recipes. 

Tuesday was spent going to a movie (Captain America: The Winter Soldier), more time in the studio working on another quilting project, and finishing the day with another of Verne’s fantastic meals. There’s been a lot of repetition in this blog post with mother-daughter matching quilts, the same pizzas we just had earlier in April, and now, I’m embarrassed to say, the same meal we’ve eaten thrice before in recent weeks…Cajun BBQ Shrimp with Dirty Rice! 

It’s my fault! Verne would never remake a recipe if it were up to him. He’d always be trying something new. I can’t help it…this has got to be the best shrimp dish I’ve ever eaten and I can’t get enough of it! Also, I like to serve the ‘tried and true’ to guests (and family). Maria LOVED it! This time we got a picture of it so you’ll be able to better visualize the jumbo shrimp (wild shrimp from Alaska that Scott gives us for Christmas each year) served in a sauce of lemon, spices, cayenne for a bit of kick, and plenty of butter. It's served with a traditional Cajun side made from white rice cooked with sautéed bell pepper, onion, and celery and seasoned with cayenne. It’s amazing to me that this handful of ingredients simply prepared results in such incredible flavors. 

I think we'll have to have it again soon!