Canned Tomatoes, photo by thebittenword.com

I drove up to Fort Collins again this week to check out some canning classes with my friend Amanda that we had seen advertised at the Farmer’s Market we went to a few weeks ago.  I am hoping this summer with our garden and our CSA I will have enough vegetables to freeze, can, and dry that I might be able to get through the winter without having to buy too much out of season produce at the grocery store.  We went to the canning basics class offered by the extension office.  It was only $10 and provided a lot of information on both water bath and pressure canning in Colorado.  I found the class very helpful because I knew pretty much nothing about canning before we went.  I still don’t think I’m confident enough to try pressure canning without someone who knows what they’re doing, but I think I could try water bath canning.  And at least I know now that because we live at a higher altitude than most people, we have to change the length we leave our can in a water bath or use more pressure depending on the type of canning we are doing.

I’m planning on taking a salsa class from them later in the summer where we will get hands on experience preparing and canning salsa and also a drying class to learn how to preserve food by drying it.  Many extension offices in the U.S. will offer similar classes and may also offer other information on their websites about everything from safe food preparation to how to garden in your area.  Or for more information on food preservation techniques, or canning recipes that have been tested and are safe check the National Center for Home Food Preservation website.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 20th, 2009 at 8:23 am and is filed under Eating Local. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.