Pretty Magical

No recipe today, just a quick note to say:
Last weekend, Laura introduced me to canning. She arrived balancing her giant canner, ten pints of strawberries, and many tiers of shiny jamming jars in her arms. We got to work hulling berries and sterilizing jars in boiling water.

We made strawberry jam. I felt fierce. It's pretty darn magical to take some red berries and add sugar and heat and turn them into sweet ruby jam, with bits of whole fruit intact. Pretty magical and pretty delicious smoothed with butter on crusty rye bread. After I've made it again, I'll post the recipe here.

Magic is built into making jam, just like it's built into making bread, yogurt or sauerkraut. You take a raw material and teach it to sing a bright and sustained note. You take a raw material and make it easier to share and save. My remaining three jars of strawberry jam are good until next year. (Though we've already eaten up two of the five jars in my house, so I doubt they'll last that long. I'll make more soon.)

When Laura took the jars out of the canner, we hovered over them, chicken mamas watching for their chicks to pop out. We waited with anticipation. Then we heard the first suction pop!  That's the lid sealing to the top of the jar. We exchanged gleeful looks and mischievous nods with each small pop! that followed. "That was a good one" she said. It was so helpful to have an experienced canner guide me through the process. I am not daunted by this any longer. Thanks to Laura I know what a good pop and a weak pop sound like. My only other experience with canning was assisting my mom when I was around three years old. We canned apricots from the giant tree in our backyard in the Sugarhouse neighborhood of Salt Lake City, Utah. I stood on a stepladder so I could reach the counter. Now I can start canning all kinds of things myself, adding new chapters to the story. I'd like to make some apricot jam.
 
Maybe soon I'll try something like this. Grown-up jam. I also can't wait to try peppers, tomatoes and pickling!

Until then, there are still three more jars...