[conspire] canning

[Akkana Peck]

paulz at ieee.org writes:
> I know that Rick occasionally makes jams and other sorts of canned goods.   The process is not extremely complicated, but there are a couple things needing attention so it is safe and healthy and free of possible pathogens.
> The USDA has a really good guide.  https://nchfp.uga.edu/publications/publications_usda.html

I've always been intimidated by canning -- all that sterilizing of jars sounds like a lot of work, and what if I mess it up and don't sterilize enough?

A couple of years ago several locals had bumper crops of apricots and plums that they were giving away, far too many to eat before they went bad, and a friend shared a deep dark secret: you don't have to worry about any of that sterilizing stuff, if you have a freezer.

I ended up dumping the apricots and plums into my InstantPot -- just fruit, nothing else -- and cooking it for some amount of time I based on web searches like "apricot OR plum jam instantpot". When it was done, I tasted it (the apricot was perfect, the plum needed a little bit of sugar, or maybe I'm remembering that backward), then spooned it all into plastic containers, one for the fridge and the rest for the freezer. Worked great and I had homemade, not oversweetened, jam for most of a year.

Apricots are easy to pit, but plums aren't, so another deep dark secret my friend shared with me: you don't even have to cut the pits out of the plums, and you certainly don't have to peel them. Just dump in whole or halved fruit, and work around the pits when you're dishing up jam to spread on your toast.

        ...Akkana (cooking doesn't have to be hard)