Why I Can

Today I stood over an outdated stove in an unrenovated kitchen, stirring a big pot with a wooden spoon. Lily sat at the kitchen table, drawing with her colored pencils. Because there was a refrigerator drawer full of apples that needed to be used, but really because this is one of the secret things I do to relax, I had decided to can.

Canning is a weird little hobby of mine that fell out of nearly universal favor fifty years ago, although it has its mad modern adherents, to be sure. Some people still can because it is thrifty, and although I am thrifty, this is not why I can. Some people can because it is crafty and one of the original home arts. These people enjoy Martha Stewart and make little cloth tops for their finished jars. Although I have been known to do labels, and admire Martha as a talented freak of nature, this is not why I can. To tell you the truth, I'm not sure why I ever started doing this, but it must have something to do with the fact that my mother did, and my grandmother and my great-grandmother, although they all made clothes for their children too, with a sewing machine. The last time I tried to use a sewing machine, which was in the 1980s, I somehow managed to cut myself. I have never, needless to say, made clothes for my children.

The canning began when we acquired our little house in Connecticut. I guess I was looking for something to do. I had been spending my weekends in New York, and it was so quiet and still, and although I love to read and garden and cook, I am a night owl, and I had some time on my hands. As is typical of me, I plunged in without research or preparation. I bought some jars and started with my own fruit: tomatoes and rhubarb. The jars piled up, and that year, along with a number of varieties of chutneys and glistening jewel-toned marmalades, I had holiday gifts. My grandmother was especially appreciative.

Whenever I mentioned to a friend that I had made jam, or apple butter--today's project--or jalapeno jelly, I was always met with the same puzzled expression. Several people asked me if I had ever tried a particular brand of canned product, their personal favorite, as if somehow I'd arrived in the twenty-first century with no knowledge of gourmet grocery stores. I sort of stopped mentioning it, and canning became, as I said before, my own secret weird little hobby, reserved for late nights alone in the country, while my husband slept and the dogs lay at my feet, hoping for drips from the spoon.

Today, as I stirred, and the house filled with the smells of the apples cooking down with cider vinegar and cinnamon and allspice, and the mixture spattered on the stovetop around the pot and Lily hummed at the table as she drew, I found myself thinking about how satisfying I always find it to make something, to use something wisely and well, to begin a project, see it through, and set it resoundingly down on the counter in neat old-fashioned Ball jars. Done, and done. Canning is particularly gratifying because canned goods keep. What you make is shared. And the technique, unlike mastery of the sewing machine, apparently, is learned through osmosis, while sitting in a warm kitchen while someone you love wields an old wooden spoon.