life in a red state 213done it. But for us it’s an important part of summer. Not only because the
outcome is great meals for the rest of the year, but because the process is
our way of saying good- bye to the sunshine and pace of summer, and re-
flecting on what the season gave us. August’s busy kitchen is our transition
from the long, open- ended hours of summer outdoor work to the stricter
routines of school and work in the fall. I like to think of it as an end- of-
summer meditation.
American culture doesn’t allow much room for slow reflection. I watch
the working people who are supposed to be my role models getting pushed
to go, go, go and take as little vacation time as possible. And then, often,
vacations are full of endless activity too, so you might come back from your
“break” feeling exhausted. Canning tomato sauce isn’t exactly a week at the
spa, but it definitely forces a pause in the multitasking whirl of everyday
life. It’s a “slow down and do one thing at a time” process: now chop vege-
tables, now stir them until the sauce thickens, now sterilize the jars, make
sure each ring is tight. If you’re going to do anything else at the same time, it
had better just be listening to your own thoughts. Anything else could
cause you to blow the entire batch. Canning always puts me in a kind of
trance. I reach a point where stirring the bubbling sauce is the world’s only
task, and I could do it forever. Whether you prefer to sit on a rock in a
peaceful place, or take a wooden spoon to a simmering pot, it does the body
good to quiet down and tune in.
The basic canning process is as simple as this: (1) tomatoes are dropped
into boiling water and peeled, or else cooked down with other ingredients
into sauce; (2) they are poured into sterilized mason jars (we take them
straight from the dishwasher) and capped with two- part, screw- on lids;
and (3) the filled jars are boiled for the number of minutes specified by the
recipe, in a big pot of water. We use an enamelware canning kettle that han-
dles ten quarts at a time.
The following recipes are some personal favorites for storing our
bounty of summer produce all year long. The family secret in our tomato
sauce (which obviously won’t be, now) is cinnamon and nutmeg, usually
thought of as dessert spices but used in savory tomato dishes in Greek and
some Middle Eastern cuisines. The three- sauce recipe is adapted from The