Tag Archives: fruits

Confessions of a Canning Newbie

homemade strawberry jam
my homemade strawberry jam

I’ve always liked to cook and bake, but one thing I’ve never done until the last couple of weeks is canning, the practice of preserving foods like jams or pickles in heat-treated airtight cans or jars. Confession #1 is that I’ve always found the idea a bit intimidating! Despite many years working in biology labs and confidently maintaining sterile solutions to prevent contamination of cultured cells, I think there was still part of me that worried about getting the food safety aspect of canning right. But I’ve finally taken my first baby steps into the world of canning and it really wasn’t as complicated as I thought it might be! While there are certainly some key steps to doing it safely, it isn’t difficult, at least for simple things like jam. So today I’d like to share a few things I’ve learned about jam-making and canning from books we have in our collection and some reading online.

Last summer, I came across sour cherries at one of the small, fancier grocery stores in the area. Whenever I see fruits I haven’t had before — plumcots! sugar-apples! Manzano bananas! — I’m always curious to give them a try and that was the first time I’d seen sour cherries for sale. Sour cherries, also known as tart cherries, are a bit too sour for most people to want to eat raw, but they are great for making jams and baked goods. They also tend to have a very short season, typically only a few weeks in July here in Ontario, so if you see them, act fast!

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Are Tomatoes Fruits?… and other situations

Mark HoffmannMay I introduce you to the inhabitants of our fruit bowl here that you’ll find in Fruit Bowl, by Mark Hoffmann: Apple, Peach, Banana, Lemon, Orange, Pear, Strawberry, Grapes, Lime, Blueberry, and Tomato. Wait – tomato? Slightly creepy (just look at those faces) but ever so adorable (in that “it’s weird but I love it” kind of way) – complete with arguably some of the best puns of all time in children’s fiction – Tomato makes his case to the fruit bowl denizens that tomatoes are, indeed, a fruit. But why stop there? It’s not just tomatoes! A whole lineup of other unlikely fruits gravitate in line to the fruit bowl from the crisper in the fridge, finally gaining the ability to be recognized for what they truly are. Read it to find out what else belongs in the fruit bowl!

A delightful read, though I have to admit with a somewhat ambiguous takeaway; is Hoffmann just tackling the issue of what makes a fruit a fruit, or are we actually talking about in-groups and out-groups? Also, why are vegetables presented as being lesser than fruits? Why does everyone want to be a fruit? Or do they just want to be recognized for who/what they really are? I’m also interested in why Tomato is male, because do tomatoes (the fruit) even have sexes?*, but that might be a discussion for another time – I absolutely adored this book from beginning to end, literally cover to cover.

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