One of my favorite childhood memories is the attention I got from my mom when I wasn’t feeling well. She’d keep me home from school and feed me comfort food. This included her chicken soup and buttered toast, followed by preserved peaches.
That fruit went down so smoothly that any ache was immediately soothed, and all but guaranteed a speedy recovery. Jars of Palisade peaches, fresh out of the canner. (Betty Cahill, Special to The Denver Post) Memories of her canning efforts are etched on the front burner of my brain: her stern scooting of me and my older sister out of the kitchen so we weren’t harmed by hot jars and sticky stuff.
She stored the canned goods on a long, rough-hewn shelf in the basement next to assorted garden tools and seed-starting containers. I still dream about the perfectly aligned, incandescent jars of canned peaches, tomatoes, pickles and, in some years, sweet cherries from the Flathead Valley in northwest Montana. — Betty Cahill Preserving home-grown food never goes out of style.
There’s “renewed interest in preserving since so many people took up gardening in 2020,” according to Laura Griffin, county extension specialist for Colorado State University in Pueblo. Plus, with the closeness of grocery stores, farmers markets and seasonal farm stands, you don’t have to travel far to find home-grown produce to preserve without the effort of growing it yourself. The hardest decision to make is what vegetable and fruit you wish to preserve and t.
