Pop!

Is there anything more satisfying than hearing a canning jar seal?

Our tomatoes have been going gangbusters this year and today I canned 16 pints of crushed tomatoes and 5 quarts of juice from just 3 vines.

The jars come out of the canner bubbling furiously. The heat is a tangible and vicious[1] thing, even the briefest touch will raise blisters on your skin. And then as the jars cool the canning lids snap down with a sharp pop.

There’s no more satisfying sound in the world. It’s not that those 16 pints of tomatoes stand between us and starvation, but it represents that. No matter what happens, when the wind blows and the snow flies this winter, we’ll be able to open a jar of tomatoes and eat.

And it represents work well done. The planning of growing food, planting the seeds, tending to them, fending off the pests, harvesting, preparing and preserving, all culminates in that “pop!” as the canning jar seals.

There’s a bit of the dilettante in this. I don’t have to do this. I won’t go hungry if I don’t do it. But I don’t let that dilute my pleasure in hearing the “pop!”

1. I kept typing “viscous” and I knew that wasn’t right but the spelling checker wasn’t any help, so I finally had to ask Debbie, “how the heck do you spell vicious?” She spelled it for me [2] and then asked, “why are you typing ‘vicious’?” I replied that I was blogging about canning, but she didn’t find that explanation helpful.

2. She’s my hero. I wish I could spell.