Family Recipe: Ruth's Beet Pickles

In the spirit of canning season, I wanted to share a recipe from our family's collection. I've typed it word-for-word as my Granny had it printed in her recipe notebook. I love how this recipe has absolutely no instructions for canning. Now, to learn to can, you have to either search out someone who can teach you or read stacks of books to feel even remotely confident enough to get started on your own. But back then, this was something people (ok, admittedly - women) just knew how to do. It was one more thing learned over mama's and grandmama's shoulders in the kitchen. No written directions needed. This is a tradition that skipped my mom's generation, but luckily, Paul's mom is a home preserver and passed the skill on to us.


I love beets about any way you can make them, and if they're canned, I like them especially spicy. So I think this recipe might benefit from the addition of peppers or pepper flakes of some kind. I haven't tried canning any beets yet, mainly because I haven't come across a really huge amount of them at the farmers' market. But the season for root vegetables is nearing its end, so a good deal may be just around the corner! If you have a great recipe for beets that you'd like to share, please send it my way. I'd love to give it a try!


Ruth’s Beet Pickles

2 c. sugar

1 T. whole allspice

1 ½ T. salt

2 sticks cinnamon

3 ½ c. vinegar

1 ½ c. water

Beats [sic], cooked

Heat all ingredients and pour over cooked beats [sic] in jar. Makes 7 pints.


P.S. That's a photo of radishes & swiss chard - not beets, but the closest photo I had in my farmers' market archives! 

Preserving

It's time for canning! This is one of my favorite parts of spring and summer. Canning reminds me of my great-grandma, Isabelle (who I called "Granny"), who would "put up" green beans and tomatoes every year and freeze lots of other things. I remember the shelves of the outdoor utility closet stocked full of jars of vegetables and going out there to grab a can for her while she was cooking supper. It doesn't seem that anyone has ever been able to top Granny's green beans, but nothing ever tastes as good as it does in sweet memory. 

Granny and Papa and Aileen (my grandmother, who lived with them) never had a garden while I was growing up, but we did live out in the country where bushels of fresh vegetables were easy to come by. They'd always buy enough corn and beans each summer to fill several huge aluminum tubs, and we'd all sit around in the front room of their house shucking and snapping for an entire day.

Today, Paul and I grow what we can in our little spot of sun by our front porch. Our green thumb is still growing and hopefully by the time we have more sunlit space, we'll be more knowledgeable gardeners. But in the meantime, we do what Granny, Papa, and Aileen did. We go to our local farmers and get lots of things while they're in season and can and freeze and preserve away. Our favorite is to actually go and pick the things ourselves, and we do that every year for every type of fruit we can get our hands on. The rest we buy by the bushel from farms and farmers' markets when it's at the peak of the season. 

It's so satisfying to "put up" the summer's harvest just like Granny used to do, to use every last bit of what the season has to offer us and to be able to keep enjoying it even after its time has passed. The kind of canning that we do at home is a little different than what my Granny did, though. We do can tomatoes just like she used to, but we like to get creative with flavors a little more than she did. I'd love to make her a slice of toast with our Strawberry Provence Preserves, made with fresh-picked berries from Lineberger's Maple Springs Farm and herbs de Provence. Wonder what'd she think of that?

The recipe we used for our Strawberry Provence Preserves was adapted from Canning for a New Generation, a canning recipe book that I'd highly recommend for its modern twists on the classics. We used the recipe for Strawberry and Lavender Jam, substituting the herbs. If you're new to canning, I'd recommend starting with freezer jam, which is how we first began. It's a great way to familiarize yourself just a bit with canning before committing to it. You make the jam but instead of canning it traditionally, you place it in jars (even reused ones will do), and pop it in the freezer!