Canning Panic

JELLY. Jam. Preserves. Smashed up, squished, gooey, ooey fruit. Practically once a day for my whole adult life I have twisted off the cap of a jar of sweet berry goodness and slathered it on a croissant or a sandwich or a dark chocolate brownie (good one, hmm?). But up until this past week, I had never made the stuff myself.

Enter the Alaska vibe and this odd deep-seeded desire to harvest and create and enjoy nature's bounty. I would normally add "survive" to the list but I'll be honest: there is no way in hell Team Leslie could survive on our buckets of collected produce and fungi... maybe for a day or two, but then we'd be toast (without jam). Anyway, our homesteader groove has been strong lately and so we embarked. Indigo and I had seen a recipe for jelly made from fireweed, that gorgeous fuchsia flower growing prolifically in any open space during the summer months. So we diligently stripped every fireweed stalk we came across of its petals and froze them in lovely purple baggies... boiling them yielded a pink, fragrant juice. Next came the pectin powder, the sugar, and the... PANIC.

(A brief interlude about panic... My philosophy is this: the only people I know who deserve to feel like panicking on a regular basis are ER doctors, of whom we know many. The rest of us? Not worth it. Unless life or limb are at risk, we should take a chill pill and settle down. Ironically, panicking is not part of the job description for our dear ER doc friends. Perhaps, as an outlet, they should take up canning...)

I took a closer look at the little folded paper guidelines tucked in the pectin powder package and discovered an overwhelming set of directions for canning. (I should confess that when buying said pectin powder at the grocery store I noticed a whole canning kit... "A canning kit? How hard can it be? We've got cans, lids... we're golden.")

• Lids need to be kept hot in a near boiling water bath.
• Jars should be sterilized and remain warm.
• Jam should be added to jars with haste, lids screwed on tightly, and can rack submerged into boiling water bath for five minutes with several inches of water above and beneath.
• A "popping sound" indicates that the seal is not sufficient.
• A sloshing consistency indicates that the jelly did not set properly.

Hot lids? Sterilized? Can rack? Not sufficient? Not set properly? AHHHHH! A sweet Mommy-daughter project turned into a full fledged disaster zone. In a sad attempt to create a "can rack" and a "boiling water bath" I folded up some aluminum foil into a fan and jammed it down into a steel pot of water, cranked the heat to high, and chucked in the lids. A minute later I sloshed our virgin jelly into the jars, capped 'em, and, taking a deep breath,  gingerly submerged them onto the aluminum foil fans. The Homesteader Gods were not in my favor. The jars began to jump all around, clinking and clanking and flipping over, the foil floated to the top of the pot, and the water began to boil over.

"Indigo! You need to give Mommy space, now."

"J, I need your help, now."

There was yelling. Tongs were wielded with vigor. Someone may have been hip-checked out of the kitchen. In the end, two little four-ounce jars of fireweed jelly sat on a dishtowel on our counter. And we waited for the tell-tale popping sound...

No pop! One for us and one for Great Grammy.

Bolete mushrooms - just dry fry, no canning. Ahhh... (and who doesn't love that funny little instrument man on the cover of the mushroom guide?)