By Stephen Smoot
The rain drizzled cold out of a gray November sky last Thursday evening as the last vestiges of Indian Summer were pushed away by the steely raw weather typical this time of year. Lower temperatures and shorter days put many in mind of deer and squirrel season, especially the need for effective ways to preserve the bounty of the hunt.
In the warm and inviting basement kitchen and dining area of Old Fields Baptist Church, the Hardy County Family Support Center teamed up with Pastor Dan Howard. There he taught his final canning class of the season, one that focused on safe, effective, and, best of all, easy ways to can meat.
“Meat is the easiest to can,” noted Pastor Dan, who added that “a lot of other foods have more prep work.”
The center held several canning classes over the course of the year. It started with jams and jellies, then soups and other quick meals (attendees that night still raved about the delicious beef stew and chicken pot pie filling they canned), green beans and other vegetables, tomatoes and related products such as spaghetti sauce, then finally in September, apples and apple pie filling.
Pastor Dan arrived early, unloading supplies from his vehicle. Though the class started at five, those coming to learn and have fun trickled in over the next several minutes. Some were accompanied by their children, who either participated in the class or socialized with each other in the dining area.
The entire event felt much less like a class led by an instructor and much more like family gathering at their grandparents’ house for a family meal.
Pastor Dan started by bringing all around the large kitchen island. Several parchment paper lined pans and huge packages of farm fresh sausage awaited. All thrust their hands into the sausage as the Pastor advised them to make a number of patties of equal thickness for best cooking results.
“Sausage you don’t want to raw pack,” said Pastor Dan, who added that, unlike other meats, canning raw sausage results in a different and possibly unpleasant change in taste versus cooking the sausage thoroughly first.
Other meats, such as beef, deer, chicken, and others cook in the jars during the canning process and there is no difference in taste and texture between raw and cooked packing.
Laura Houston, one of the attendees, remarked on one of the best treats of coming to all the classes, “if we make something at one class, we get to eat it at the next class.”
As the sausage cooked, Pastor Dan moved straight into canning different types of beef, including ground and stew meat. Here, he noted that wide mouth jars accommodate meat much better. One can get fairly creative with the canning process too. Pastor Dan said that one can even make a meatloaf mix, can it, and have jars of meat loaf ready for a family on the go to quickly heat and eat. The main benefit, as others noted, is that those who can their own food have a lot more control over the quality of the food they eat.
And heating up a canned homemade meatloaf made in one’s own kitchen is much quicker and less expensive than preparing a frozen meal packaged in plastic hundreds or thousands of miles away.
As the class went on, those who came shared stories, cracked jokes, talked of their own cooking techniques, laughed and smiled – a lot. Such an atmosphere gives people a chance to escape the demands of life to simply relax and enjoy the company of others.
One could say that this brings the people involved just as much benefit as the lessons learned.
For the Family Support Centers in Hardy, Hampshire, Grant, Pendleton, and elsewhere in the region, these classes serve as part of a much greater purpose. In generations past, people turned to family to learn a lot of the fundamentals of cooking, raising children, and other needs. With people so widely scattered these days, families of all ages often have no one to turn to to learn and offer mutual support.
Family Support Centers have a dual mission of offering that support while also building a community of people who come together to not only help each other, but also to build fellowship.
