PUTTING FOODS BY is my next postings, throughout the forty-some days of Lent! The recipes are easy - I know, cuz I've done em, many a time...preserving foods is a lot of fun, not that time-taking, and has you feeling good about your self and your work and the foods themselves....try some of these recipes as they 'come up' - they are tried and true!

LENT PRESERVES AND JAMS

For forty days and forty nights, I am goin' to attempt to eat healthy foods of all kinds...and these perserves and preservations and jams and so on are Very Healthy Foods, indeed they are!

Here are my General Public Health Rules for preserving all foods, especially by 'canning'...all these recipes from my Putting  Things By Book are Tried and True: which means I made them at least once and usually much more. I gleaned them all from older Wisconsin Women Family and Friends near Bumpity Road Farm in Portage, Wisconsin in the early 70s. Every Woman for miles about Preserved Everything in sight that wasn't nailed down permanent or running away!

Public Health Rules:

1) Wash everything washable with a vegetable brush under running water.
2) Cut out any soft or bruised spots - very fresh produce only!
3) Cut off the blossom-end of any fruit or vege - especially cukes or zukes.
4) Select same-size of cut pieces to same-size as much as possible.
5) Use canning or pickling or sea or dairy or kosher salt: do Not use table salt, which has iodine in it.
6) Use vinegars the are four to six percent acid only.
7) Use cider vinegars most often; not wine vinegars.
8) Be Exact in measuring vinegars.
9) With white vinegar, be sure the color is clear.
10) Sugar in preserving is usually cane or beet white sugar.
11)When using brown sugar or honey, you'll need 1/2 more than with white sugar, often.
12) Use only fresh whole spices of herbs in little cloth bags (make yourself or easily purchased) unless you want that country-effect, visually!
13) With garlic, always blanch the cloves for two inches before adding - they'll spoil in the jars otherwise.
14) Crisp pickles with alum if you want, but grape or cherry leaves crisp better with no commercial aftertaste, so are especially good with dill pickles.
15) Utensils should all be enamel ware, stainless steel, or glass, only. wooden spoons to stir. Earthenware Crocks, glazed, no lead. Tongs, funnels, food grinders should all be of these same materials.
16) To weigh-down veges or fruits into brines, use china plates with glass jars filled with water, on top.
17) To Brine: in long-method fermentation (three weeks or over) you must remove the top scum daily, and keep the brine cool, or it will all spoil something awful.
18) To Brine fresh-pack, for a pungent taste: brine overnight.
19) For Fruits, brine in a sweet and sour syrup, overnight.
20) Processing means boiling the product in its clean or sterile canning jar with lids and rims on tight, for anywhere from ten to thirty minutes in a 'water bath' that covers the jars in a big pot. this preserves the product against spoilage for months. Recipes should tell you how long to 'process'.
21) Preserves of all kinds have to 'Season' for awhile. Alcohol products are carefully capped or corked, and then have to season for six to nine months, sometimes more, in cool, dry places. Recipes will tell you how long it will be before the product will be seasoned - pickles take weeks; jams: just a few days, for example.
22) Follow every step in a good recipe exactly as you  can. It's a lot of work for nothin', if it doesn't come out tasty and safe!

These are the Basic Rules...

The First Pickles will be tomorrow's post! Aunt Verna's Prize Bread and Butter Pickles!