Preserving

Mid to late summer finds me yearning to satisfy a deep and instinctual urge to preserve.
It has as much to do with my being a product of the Niagara region as with genetic
inheritance - my grandmother was a prolific preserver. I am ashamed to admit that the
sense of thrift that informed her work is of less importance to me. Today, our complex
economy reduces the act of preserving to “little more than a conceit”, playing at self-
reliance.(Pollan 364) Simply and sadly put, a bottle of brand name chili sauce costs less
to purchase than it does to preserve. I remain undeterred and preserve because it is
both irresistible and seductive; providing small seasonal pleasures, connecting me to my
past and capturing what is good, perfect and in great abundance. Preserving is the
delicious and intimate taste of a place. Modernists recoil, but the world is righter with
bottles delicately clattering in the boiling water of a preserving kettle.

My grandmother had six children, 4 of them boys; an important detail when considering
food supply and demand. Like most women of her generation, born in the penumbra of
World War I, she championed frugality. The unsettled world of her early years made
preserving inevitable. Store bought goods were not widely available and a lavish
expense. I wonder if under these conditions it was more a chore and less a pleasure –
urgent and entirely practical. I try to imagine her shouldering into an already full
domestic day a bushel of beets for pickling. Undoubtedly she derived deep pleasure. I
know this because preserving was one of the last things, besides driving, that she
surrendered to advancing age. The last time I went down to her basement there was a
small shelving unit that held her final harvest. Those jars proof of the comfort of habitual
practice and a feeble assertion of a waning self reliance.

It would have been gross negligence for my Grandmother, an early morning regular at
the Welland market, to ignore the bounty of the Niagara region. The late summer
harvest of this agricultural paradise heralds the mutuality of our relationship to our food
source. Capturing a season’s wealth entails a deep engagement with a nature generous
in its provision. Brightly coloured fruits and vegetables invite, rather than prohibit,
harvest and production.(Pollan 23)

I have childhood memories, during the peak of tomato season, of surveying my

grandmother’s basement from a perch on the top stair - below a warren of seething
activity. My father and at least a few of his siblings and their respective spouses in the
process of canning tomatoes. Bushels of tomatoes scattered around, a large kettle on a
gas jet for blanching, a laundry sink filled with plum tomatoes bobbing in cold water like
little red buoys, family members gathered around an old melamine table skinning and
packing the tomatoes in jars. My grandmother’s house was seeped in tomato stench
and debris; shards of translucent skin, crimson pulp or a pip stuck to the most
astonishing places. As a young child, I had the luxury of carousing with my cousins,
occasionally visiting the seemingly chaotic production below. As a teenager it was
impossible to talk, beg, sulk or scream my way out of this labour – the scene below more
like Dante’s inferno; the backs of my lower arms tender from the acidic juice running
down them. I lacked imagination then; I could not look lovingly on the shelves of jeweled
jars in our cold cellar admiring the work of our hands, I could not appreciate the
deliciousness contained in those bottles – the elixir that is canned peaches in February -
but more importantly I failed to appreciate the tender weave of familial union that this bit
of intense labour wrought.
It was not just about tomatoes, my grandmother made a myriad of pickles, relishes, fruits
and jams. I adored my grandmother’s pear jam. My uncle David possesses, at current
count, eleven bottles from the final batch my grandmother prepared. I am envious of this
modest treasure and try often to covet a jar. On the subject of jars I fail to mention that
my grandmother’s frugality extended to the containers that housed her preserves. She
supplemented her canning jars by saving the few glass jars that came in to her house,
mainly mayonnaise, to put some of her edible handiwork in. The jar was simply a means
of transport. The beautiful pale, maple wood hue of pear jam would shine out from a
Hellman’s mayonnaise jar. I was, and still am, a glutton for its ripe sweetness and ladle,
rather than dollop it on to hot buttered toast.

Only the embers of this tradition remain in my family. My father and uncle put down
small batches of special relishes and pickles. My father has recently let it be known that
he will no longer produce the relish that I fondly refer to as ‘Grandpa’s relish’. The label
denoting my grandfather’s great love for this particular preserve; he himself was sailing
the Great Lakes earning his keep during the glut of summer. I think my father lobed it
out knowing that I could not imagine Tourtiere at Christmas without a large spoonful of
this sweet-acidic tumeric drenched accompaniment.

And so I find myself fanning the flames of the preserving tradition. Embracing a ritual as
my family slowly loosens their hold on it - this homely art providing me with some small
sense of continuity. Much of September and October is devoted to putting things down;
mango chutney, peach and rosemary compote, chili sauce, pear jam, fresh tomato
sauce and Escoffier’s relish. Experiencing the joys and aggravations of the little lessons
of preserving; jam in particular. I lack the sense of ambition and industry of my
grandmother. The fantasy of filling a cold store room with the products of my labour is
appealing but entirely unnecessary. Instead, I clear a small space in my own pantry for
this season’s additions, not unlike the scale of space that my grandmother’s last harvest
occupied.

As personal as this experience is, I am participating in a growing revisit of this simple

and unpretentious art. Professionals and amateurs alike are taking up this, and other,
homely traditions. Much of this interest a rebuttal of the fast, the ready made and
production stripped of local character. Brand identities are being fashioned out of
preserving materials; the bottles and their contents evoking homemade, traditional and
slow values. I have to work harder than my grandmother to forge a substantial and
authentic relationship to food, community, and the local seasons. Preserving is one
small measure in support of those ideals and the jars in my pantry – this years supply - a
reminder of substance in a world often shallow.

Pollan, Michael. The Omnivore’s Dilemma. (New York: The Peguin Press, 2006)