Behind jars

Jars of pickled beets, dill pickles and blackberry jelly line the counters and cabinets of Dorene Grebing's home outside of Frohna. n A large bowl of fresh-picked tomatoes and a paring knife sit at the kitchen counter where Grebing does most of the peeling and preparation for canning. Two partially filled Mason jars stand at the ready.

Home-canned foods and jellies are a staple of many rural homes in Southeast Missouri, where the family garden is as large as some small farm fields.

But canning seems to be a dying art.

Few women today are learning how to prepare hot-water process or cold-water baths for canned foods and jellies.

Yet fairs in Southeast Missouri will showcase some of the best home-canned foods, jams and jellies in the coming weeks. Prizes will be awarded and egos rewarded for the efforts.

Judy Leuders, a nutrition and health education specialist with University Extension in Perryville, Mo., says canning isn't disappearing in Southeast Missouri.

Leuders judges canned goods for the fairs in Perry and Butler counties and says the entries abound.

"There are enough people that are interested in knowing what goes into their food that they will grow and can them. There's a huge home-canned section at the Perry County fair," she said.

Hundreds of jars of jellies and all sorts of vegetables are entered each year, as well as some entries for canned meats and sausages.

"Canning is like a chemical equation, and you really need to follow the recipe," Leuders said. However, some people do make adjustments to reduce sugar or salt.

Grebing doesn't go to quite the canning lengths that she used to now that her children are grown and married. At one time, she canned 25 gallons of grape juice for her children, but now she only uses smaller pint-sized jars. She still plants a good-sized garden plot beside her house and cans or freezes most of the vegetables she grows.

Between keeping up with the garden and canning, her summer schedule stays full. She'll enter some items in the East Perry County Fair at Altenburg in mid-September, and some of the items will be Christmas gifts.

She thinks fair judges ought to give out more blue ribbons at the fairs "because there are so many people who take something and don't get a prize."

Canning is a time-consuming affair and doesn't bring a lot of cost-savings unless you grow your own produce, Leuders said.

Grebing agrees, but it's not the financial rewards she's after.

"It's best when you can just pick and eat," she said of the produce she grows. Her children particularly like fresh-canned green beans.

"They all say how good they taste," Grebing said. "And really when you just bring them in from the garden and cook them, that's the best flavor."

Fresh-picked and canned vegetables aren't sitting around a store waiting for someone to buy them, she said.

Most of Grebing's canned produce is green beans, pickles and beets. But she doesn't stop there. She makes grape juice and grape and blackberry jellies, and she cans sweet cherries and even pickles garlic.

Corn and pepper relish also are some of her canning standbys. But she doesn't like to waste anything, so she's found a way to use the peach peels for making jelly and even uses overripe cucumbers for a German recipe.

Senf-gurken is the German name for a canning recipe that uses over-ripe cucumbers for pickling. "It's an old recipe, and there aren't really too many place where you can find this, except maybe a gourmet store," Grebing said.

Leuders said most of the canned foods she judges at fairs aren't out of the ordinary because judges tend to recommend only USDA-approved recipes so that issues of food safety are addressed.

Leuders said she gets lots of questions about how long to process particular canned goods and how to correct a failed attempt at processing.

"It's a lot of work and effort involved in growing and harvesting for the people who can, and there's a potential financial loss" when recipes don't come out exactly right.

ljohnston@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 126