You 'can' do it

So you're growing a ton of food. Now what?

My latest column for Columbus & The Valley Magazine covers some do’s and don’ts of canning your harvest. You can read it for free.

Topics include:

• A diving bell for the kitchen?

• Triggering Samin Nosrat’s trauma response.

• Which canning supplies you can reuse.

• A homemade salsa recipe for canning that doesn’t taste like ass.

Here’s the intro…

It’s a huge silvery thing, bigger than the biggest eye on the stove on which it sits. It looks like a Cold War artifact, this tank with its brushed aluminum. There’s a pressure dial sprouting from its heavy lid, which is lined with six bakelight knobs to cinch it down past the danger zone. When it’s filled with water, the whole thing emits an ominous gurgle and sometimes it rocks like a sugar-fueled kindergartener.

It’s our pressure canner. Most often we just call it the diving bell.

Its volume is 21 quarts, with what must be 3-inch thick side walls and a weight of approximately 800 pounds. Never mind that its specs say it’s got 3/8-inch walls and weighs 24 pounds, I stand behind my own ciphering.

It sounds scary, and it is. It’s designed to hold enormous amounts of pressure and is the only safe way to can most vegetables, soups and meats, per the USDA. My advice to novice canners is twofold: don’t buy it, and don’t use it.

Instead focus on…