Pressure Cookers

OOPS! The Kansas Woman always managed to be out of the house when I brought out a pressure cooker. I prefer canning over freezing because once beans are in the jar, you are through with them, and a power failure doesn’t bother them.

She recalls when her mother’s pressure cooker redecorated the kitchen ceiling. I don’t know why it did that to her kitchen ceiling, but it changed everybody’s feelings towards pressure cookers.

My mother used pressure cookers because they make everything quicker and easier. The oldest one in this house is about a hundred years old.

My mother stressed one rule: “Never leave it unattended.” I don’t, but I also have the most modern copy, known as an “Instant Pot.”

An Instant Pot can whittle down the cooking time of anything and is really just a gussied up pressure cooker married to a few computer chips.

Summer reminds me that every community had a summer canning plant, perhaps in a school kitchen, with someone in charge of it, often the local Ag teacher.

The idea of visiting a canning plant has escaped me until this year, and just a few minutes ago I did a search and discovered there are many canning plants operating right now in Georgia.

Some operations have more equipment than others. Most offer water bath and pressure canning; many have pea and bean shellers, blanchers, and corn creamers. Corn silkers are common and a few offer dehydrators and freeze driers.

Freeze drying is quicker than dehydrating and removes as much as 95% of moisture from the product. It more closely preserves the fresh taste of vegetables.

The facilities can process foods in glass jars and cans. The universal going rate for preserving in jars seems to be a quarter if you bring your own jars. Food put up in metal goes for $1.50 per can, or so, depending upon the size of the can.

Corn is not dry enough for grinding, but one canning plant has a grits grinder.

Uncle Guy Phillips went from selfsufficient to a grocery shopper. He smoked hams, sausage, bacon until he had to give that up and bought canned hams. The last thing he gave up was canning his own meat.

He went to the canning plant towards the end of the season. He processed a cow and put it up in quart cans of cooking oil. His beef flaked away at the sight of a fork.

In some towns the canning plant was located near the farmer’s market for folks who wanted to can fresh produce but couldn’t raise their own.

As I write this, South Georgia is just busting and last week it looked like everything was coming in at the same time.

That doesn’t help me any because the nearest canning plants are miles and miles away.

joenphillips@yahoo.com