RECIPES Preserve Your Own Fruits and Vegetables? Yes, You Can! Nothing tastes better than a jar of home-canned produce, especially if you canned it yourself. The satisfaction of knowing the effort and hard work you put into that beautiful jar of rather yummy goods makes it even more scrumptious. Whether its pickles, tomatoes, salsa, tomato sauce, green beans, meats, jams, jellies, peaches, pears, cherries or anything else you find delectable, it all tastes almost as good as fresh when you pop open that jar in a few months. I never thought much about canning while growing up. Sure, I had eaten homemade pickles or home-canned fruits and thought mmm, this is good, I sure hope there’s more, but I never thought about actually doing it myself. My mom had canned and I never really paid much attention to the process, I just happily enjoyed the finished product. Years went by, I grew older and enjoyed more canned goods and one day the “peach revolution” happened. Some time ago, my mother inlaw served me up a bowl of her home-canned peaches. I was in fruit heaven. They were amazing; so sweet and juicy; they tasted just like I was 14 v HERVOICE SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2014 eating them fresh from a farmer’s market stand. I had to know how she did it. You canned them yourself? Really?! No way! How do you do that? Well....can I watch? I watched and I helped many times and eventually I learned how to do them on my own. I’ve been canning a variety of produce every year since; peaches, pears, cherries, green beans, tomatoes, salsa and even pickles. It’s wonderful to have a pantry stocked full of rainbow-colored goods to enjoy during the cold winter months! Want to try it too? It’s easy. If I can do it, you surely can too! Getting Started Canners Lavonne Meyer, Food Safety Field Specialist with the Sioux Falls Regional Center, guided me to their SDSU Extension website at http://igrow.org/ where there is an abundance of resources available. Canning instructions, safety precautions, recipes and videos are all included under the “Healthy Families/Food Safety” section of their website. Let’s begin your canning venture. You will need a few items to get started, the first item being a canner. The type of canner, a boiling water canner