Tom in the Kitchen

When I met Tom, we were fifteen years old. I had grown up in the country eating garden-fresh vegetables in-season and meat from grass-fed cattle that my father raised. Tom had most recently lived in Houston, and he had grown up eating tinned meat and store-canned vegetables. But he took to country cooking, and after we married, I quickly ceded to him a great deal of that cooking, cooking which has become more and more health-conscious as we've aged. Lately I've been having some fun cooking meals with fresh vegetables from our Arizona garden, my first tomato pie, a Mexican Pepper casserole with bell peppers from our garden, a squash casserole with squash and peppers from the garden. However, Tom does most of the canning, something he really enjoys. It's really ironic that I'm the one who grew up watching my mother and grandmothers can and freeze vegetables, yet Tom, whose mother never canned anything that I know of, is the one who does the canning now. 

Here's Tom in the kitchen, canning tomatoes that we're growing in our garden. Tomatoes don't ripen here as quickly as they do in the sunny South, so he tends to can only 4-5 pints at a time as we gather enough tomatoes to do so.

Tom even canned a pint of sungold tomatoes!

fresh tomatoes cooking on the stove

The results of Tom's latest canning

We live now at 7200 ft. above sea level, and Tom had to consult the Presto Cooker Canner booklet to get instructions on canning at a higher elevation. He became frustrated with the newest booklet which came with the pressure cooker we bought to replace our old one. The booklet was printed in China, and we're sure the pressure cooker was manufactured there, too, even though National Presto Industries, Inc., still has an Eau Claire, Wisconsin address. The instructions were a little confusing. Fortunately, we had kept the old Presto Cooker-Canner booklet, printed in the 1970s in Wisconsin. The instructions in that booklet on canning at high altitudes were very clear. Here is a sample below, with the most recent publication first.

Instructions for canning at elevation, most recent booklet

Presto Cooker instructions, printed in the 1970s

Add this experience to others we've had with crappy manufacturing from overseas. Hand saws Tom bought years ago are now made in China, and they're flimsy and unusable. Compare a hoe head bought 50 years ago to ones hanging on hooks in a Home Depot or Lowes today--a laughable comparison. Fortunately, Tom is a handy man to have around. Not only did he can tomatoes last weekend; he also replaced a hoe handle I had broken. Good man.