Two Frog Home

This week’s I Eat Local Because I Can interview comes from Riana Lagarde of These Days in French Life.  Riana is an American living in France with her French husband and their five-year old daughter. She no longer works for “the man” but instead concentrates on feeding her family, raising animals, gardening, being ultra thrifty, dumpster diving and finding alternatives to a consumerist life.

1) How long have you been canning and how did you learn?

Before 2007 the thought had never crossed my mind to preserve my own food; I was living a fast life going, going, going but always in debt and not at all happy. It was not until I cut up and canceled all my credit cards and challenged myself to do “a slow year” of no shopping except food directly from farmers and health food stores that I realized I should plan ahead for the months where the was nothing growing at local farms.  After a successful and very happy, fun filled year of non consumerism which landed us out of debt and with enough money saved to buy a house; I had a shift in my consciousness about food and our health—plus, we needed some money to fix the old house we had bought, so I did 9 more months of no shopping but this time with no food shopping. I grew the food myself, raised chickens, hunted, and foraged, freeganed, bartered and traded and that meant a lot of canning and preserving food in other ways like freezing and lacto fermenting. I learned from books, neighbors, and the great sources of information on the internet.

2) Tell us about your canning philosophy.  What inspires and motivates you to practice this art?

I do it so that we always have a supply of good food, it’s my belly that motivates me but also I sleet better at night knowing that we are provided for, and I’m exhausted from all that hard work! Creating things makes us feel good as humans; that is what we are born to do. Canning your own food is creation and what we do with all that goodness is another level of art in the kitchen. So I do it to feel safe, to be healthy, to show my love to my family and friends and to feel peaceful about what I am doing on this earth.

3) What’s the best piece of advice you would give to new or novice canners?  How about advice for the seasoned canner facing burnout?

Start slow, read lots of books for inspiration, hang out with grandmothers, talk to other people, that is where you will learn all the secrets.  Some years I don’t do tomatoes if I am feeling burnt out or if the crops have had problems; I just cook with less tomatoes that winter, no big deal.  That makes me become more inventive to discover new recipes. When I preserve food with friends we can spend a whole day laughing and shelling peas or peeling the outer skins off fava beans and go home with a load of good bottled up food; when you open each bottle the laugher spills out with the beans.

4) Care to share a favorite canning recipe?   

Canned Tangerines

In winter time when tangerines flood the farmers markets and grandma’s tree, I like to bottle them up because they are so pretty to look at and they are great to cook with just like any can of mandarins.

Peel the tangerines, (make candied peels or tangerine powder instead of tossing them in the compost). If you are going to let the preserved tangerines sit on the shelf for months and months it is worth it to “section” them, that is remove all those white segment skins that impart a bitter flavor but are actually good for you because that is where the flavonoids which are anti-cancerous and help with headaches. It probably will take an hour to peel and section five pounds of tangerines. Maybe listen to a radio talk show at the same time. I love listening to “Good Food”.

Adding syrup to canned fruit helps to retain its flavor, color and shape. It is not a preservative; it does not prevent spoilage of the fruit- the acid in the fruit and water bath does that. That said, it does make them taste better to preserve in a light syrup like one part sugar to three parts water, boiled. I like to add cinnamon, or cloves, or star anise or brew red rooibos tea instead of water to make the syrup. You can use fruit juice too, just boil it.

Pack your raw fruit into meticulously cleaned and sterilized jars (I put them into a hot oven for ten minutes to sterilize mine.) Then pour the hot syrup or juice into the jars leaving half an inch of headspace. Wipe any spills off the top, pop on the lid and tighten the ring around them. Then put them into the boiling water canner!

Process the jars in the boiling water bath

Keep the jars covered with at least 2 inches of water. Keep the water boiling. Boil them for 10 minutes for sea level.

Recommended processing time for Citrus (Oranges, Grapefruit, Tangerines, Tangelos, Lemons, Limes, Clementines, etc.) sections in pint or quart jars in a boiling-water

They last about 9 months.  After that, they  get darker in color and they lose some firmness. They are safe to eat, but the flavor is bland and might be bitter by then.  So eat them in the first 6 to 9 months after you prepare them!

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