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!