Eat All About It

The Canning Across America weekend is finally here, and I’m not. The celebration weekend, as I knew from the start, fell when I would be out of town.

But you can still participate in this nationwide revival of “the lost art of putting up food,” if you’re in Seattle or any other town hosting events. (Don’t miss seeing the amazing Renee Erickson of Boat Street Cafe and Boat Street Pickles do a free demo at the University District Farmers Market.)

And, if you can’t attend a formal class or event, think about getting together with friends anyway and making a little Canvolution of your own. Because — sorry to always be finding the heartwarming moral in the story, but it’s true, it’s true — I’m starting to think this is all about learning what you can really do when you try.

Food writer Kim O’Donnel got the nationwide canning/pickling/preserving party going, as she describes here, and Shauna Ahern volunteered to host a canning party, and Kathy Casey sent a Twitter-wide invitation to anyone interested to come make some chutney, and countless others volunteered insane amounts of time on manning a website, gathering guest posts and recipes from wonderful cooks and writers, organizing or leading classes and demonstrations, procuring eye-popping giveaways and discounts and bookstore displays and other tasks too mundane and yet time-consuming to imagine. We all contributed what we could — time, advice, connections, blog posts, graphics, programming, office space, e-mails. Though my own contributions were tiny in comparison to others, I feel so good to have been a part of something that flourished so beautifully and with such generosity.  

I don’t think I would have felt so touched by the project if my old stomping grounds, the Seattle P-I newspaper, were still around. There is a certain amount of power that comes with working for a major media corporation — when you ask people to do a project with you, the default answer tends to be yes. But to see that our little group of independent writers and cooks and food-lovers could do all this on our own — it was as sweet and satisfying as the first time hearing a jam jar ping. 

I happened to be e-mailing with two senior managers from the old P-I this week, both among the many people I miss working with. One told me about making 80 jars of plum jelly from her backyard tree this year. The other will be at Canvolutionary Leslie Kelly’s house tomorrow, making some jam of her own. I’ll be there in spirit — and when I’m back in town, I’ll be picking my garden tomatoes and catching up with all of you. I do believe the Canvolution has just begun.