In the 2001 reality tv show, Pioneer Quest: A year in the real west, two couples went back in time to live as pioneers would have done in 1875. Watching this show, all I could think of was how happy I was NOT to have been a pioneer in Canada. But, I foresee a future in which we will all be rediscovering and reverting to many of the practices of these amazingly resourceful people. They spent a huge amount of time harvesting and preserving food to see them through the harsh winter.
The Summer Kitchen is one great early Canadian pioneer idea. In Ontario, old houses often had two kitchens. One inside for the winter and one outside of the main house, for the summer. This summer was one of the hottest on record, and I made a summer kitchen on my back deck. We do not have air conditioning, except for a large American Elm shading the south side of our house, so I banished all heat-generating cooking to the summer kitchen. Putting up food, as it's known in North America took place outside in this kitchen over our propane camping stove. In the UK, preserving food in glass jars is known as bottling.
As part of my family's developing interest in eating more locally, in the last three years, I have officially progressed from freezer jam to boiling water canning. Along the way, I watched a ton of You Tube videos and amassed a library of very informative books, as well as scoured the USA Agricultural Extension Services' websites. This summer, friends and I embarked on an ambitious, comprehensive canning programme. This also involved picking our own berries at local Ontario farms - strawberries, blueberries, redcurrants, blackcurrants, and cherries. It's hot, hard work, but it's very gratifying to know which tree your cherries came from.
I also discovered some of the top people writing on this issue today - both recognized in the print world of publishing and the blogosphere.
Eugenia Bone - whose food-preserving recipes have been featured in Martha Stewart Living - is a simply outstanding writer on the whole topic of putting-up, local food and growing your own. She can be found at her Denver Post blog. She divides her time between the rural and urban worlds (New York - seen below in her SoHo loft) and is provides a reliable for starting point for anyone wanting to get into this topic.
A more organic, grass-roots source of information can be found at Tigress in a Jam blogspot. The blogger, who doesn't give her name, as far as I can see, is a young, local-food and animal welfare activist, and she has instigated all kinds of seasonal canning contests, where people experiment with one main ingredient and post their recipes. It's a great example of the web as capacity builder.
Dawn R. Bazely
