Preserving Sanity

As I begin to type this post there are 9 pints of Rhubarb chutney cooling on the counter. Somewhere on this page I will type a "P" and the musical metallic ping will tell me that another jar has sealed  with satisfaction. Sometime, next winter, I will empty that jar over a pork roast and think, " This was the beginning of Spring  canning season being released from its time capsule"

I wax poetic.

On my pantry shelf there are 13 jars of fiddlehead pickles. From last spring.  Last year I canned 14 jars of fiddlehead pickles.  Fiddleheads are baby ferns plucked when newly emerged in spring. A local treat.

Well, a treat for some.  

I have never been able to get past the texture to fully enjoy the mystique  of the fiddlehead. But the menfolk just love them. So, for the last few springs I have experimented with various recipes and methods of preservation.  My unscientific observation is that the person who cooks the fiddleheads is more likely to choose broccoli over frozen fiddleheads.  Further investigations have proven that pickled fiddleheads are famine food.  If there is nothing else on the shelf there will always be pickled fiddleheads.

So as I begin this coming canning season I will no longer give thought to fiddlehead preservation. They will not be dehydrated, pickled, frozen or lacto-fermented (eww). Fossilized maybe?  

nah!