Canstravaganza 2025

Food in Jars blogger Marisa was holding a canning challenge that started in January. I happened across it after I'd already inadvertently completed the February assignments: frozen fruit and freezer excavation. I love that she includes a community-building item in each month. She also notes that this is all in fun and we should feel free to mix things up. I can say that I did at least one of the two challenges for each month at some point during the year, just not necessarily in the month she listed them.

January

• Food in Jars challenge: Root vegetables and brassicas. I didn't check this box. I've made banh mi mix in the past (shredded daikon and carrot in vinegar) and it lasts forever in the fridge so I'll come back to this at some point. Community-building assignment: Share a jar. Definitely did that; I took jars to meetings and gave them to friends. That happens just about every month, actually.

February

• Tayberry Jam Recipe by Chef Heidi Fink. 11 quarter-pints, 6 half-pints
• Classic Raspberry Jam Recipe by Creative Canning. 7 quarter-pints, 7 half-pints
• Blackberry Roasted Plum Preserves by Southern Fatty. 8 quarter-pints, 8 half-pints
• Blackberry Plum Fruit Leather: No recipe needed. Pureed blackberries and plums in the food processor, dropped in dollops about the size of a Nilla wafer on the dehydrator trays, and dried overnight to produce little fruity coins by the next morning. Those went into the freezer.
• The Food in Jars challenge was using frozen fruit, the community challenge was freezer excavation. For me, that came up when the freezer defrosted later this year. But I did make all of this month's jams from berries and fruits I'd harvested last year and stored in the freezer.

March

Working with green tomatoes frozen in 2024, 12 pounds of tomatillos frozen in 2023, I made:

• Tomatillo Lime Jalapeño Jam: 8 half-pints, 12 quarter-pints. I added 3 jalapeños to the recipe, wanting it to have a bit of heat because that felt like a fit.
• Green Tomato/Tomatillo Chutney: 12 half-pints, 7 quarter-pints. I linked to the recipe although I think in future I'll use my own Green Tomato Chutney recipe whether I'm using green tomatoes on their own or mixed with tomatillos. I can attest that the spicing mix in that is really, really good.
• Food in Jars challenge: Make a mix. I didn't make a mix in the sense of a muffin mix or salad, but I did mix green tomatoes and tomatillos. Community challenge, contribute to a community fridge or pantry. I think we did drop something off at the food shelves by the community garden on Yew, and I gave away some herbs when I had more than I could use later in the year.

April

• No canning, but the Food in Jars community challenge was to plant something and I did that. The canning challenge was herbs and alliums. I collect and dry herbs when the pots cry out for harvesting, so that happens when it happens.

May

• No canning. Food in Jars challenge was berries. Mine are still growing at this point. The community challenge was to learn from a friend. I swap canning recipes with my friend Stefanie' we have different pickled cherry recipes and I like mine.

June

• Sweet & Salty Pickled Cherries,: 26 half-pints (I'm not messing around this year. It took a great deal of discipline to stretch last year's cherries to this spring!)
• Food in Jars challenge: Jam. I cover that in other months. The community challenge was to attend a potluck. Our neighborhood potluck is in August and I went to that.

July

• Tayberry Rhubarb Jam: 9 quarter-pints, 8 half-pints
• Food in Jars challenge: Pickles, and I made those pickled cherries in June. Community challenge, support a local farmer or grower. I do that with regular trips to the Olympia Farmers' Market, and I buy eggs from the "farmette" stand down the street.

August

• Apple Cardamom Rosemary Jam: 4 quarter-pints, 4 half-pints. Read my notes on seasoning adjustments in my piece on making lots of use of apples
• Froze 8 pounds of sliced apples for future apple-pear butter; the apples are ready ahead of pears this year
• Food in Jars challenge: Sauces, which I'd thought I would make this year. I ended up doing this in November when I experimented with ketchup (never again!) and ended up making a chutney sauce. The community challenge was to gather or glean, and this time of year I'm picking blackberries. I also get apples as they ripen from a couple of publicly located trees.

September

• Last September was a canning frenzy. This September wasn't. I went on a two-week vacation starting Sept. 27 and needed to get things done to be ready for that.
• Food in Jars challenge: Condiments, and host a swap. I did the ketchup effort in November. A canning swap sounds like a fun idea; maybe I'll organize that one of these years.

October

• Also not a canning month, but the "October Surprise" of a defrosted freezer guaranteed I'd be canning in November.
• Food in Jars challenge: Drying and dehydration. I did that back in February with fruit leather, and over the course of the summer I harvested and dried some of the herbs I grow. Community challenge, share your knowledge. I write blog posts to capture and share my recipe explorations so check, did that.

November

• Blackberry Jelly: 15 quarter-pints, 6 half-pints.
• Tayberry Jam: The tried and true Chef Heidi Fink recipe I used last year. 
• Sour Cherry Amaretto Jam: I used the no-pectin sour cherry jam recipe from Sourdough Brandon, enhanced by the amaretto suggestion in the recipe from DishNTheKitchen.
• "Razzbuzzy Jam": 7 quarter-pints. Followed the Classic Raspberry Jam and stirred in 3 T. of raspberry liqueur. Not very buzzy, but tasty!
• Spiced Blueberry Jam: 7 quarter-pints.
• Smoky Spicy Tomato Jam: 3  half-pints, 11 quarter-pints. This Food in Jars is on repeat from last year and it's my go-to.
• Green Tomato Chutney Not-a-Ketchup Sauce: 8 half-pints, 11 quarter-pints.
• Salted Caramel Pear Butter: 2 half-pints, 7 quarter-pints
• Cranberry Orange Jam with Crystallized Ginger: 3 half-pints, 13 quarter-pints
• Read my comments on the Serious Eats site. Allow for more cook time to get softened citrus and cranberries. Try reducing the sugar a bit. You don't need pectin.
• This is also the point in the year when I start thinking I should have put up more half-pints, ordered more quarter-pint jars, or both! I like the quarter-pint size for gifts.
• Spiced Apple Butter: 4 half-pints, 3 quarter-pints, 1 6-oz jar, an experiment in reusing a commercial jar and lid that went into the refrigerator because I wasn't confident about the seal.
• Food in Jars challenge: Apples. Yep, got that covered. Community challenge, barter with a friend or neighbor. I do a lot in our Buy Nothing group, both giving and receiving. That space doesn't permit bartering but it feels as if it's in the general spirit.

December

• Food in Jars challenge: Use it up! Is she kidding? I make far too much to use it up in a year! Community challenge, bake for others. Yep, did that.

Not the blowout year that 2024 was, but then I still have jars of product from that year on the shelves. Anyone want some jam? Chutney? Green tomato sauce? Anyone? And I did actually end up hitting the mark on the Food in Jars challenge, just in different months.

Winter Solstice 2025

In Western society we give ourselves assignments at the new year to make a whole new self. Unrealistic assignments, of course. Between one day and the next we're not really going to flip a switch and go from zero exercise to five days a week at the gym. If we manage that for a week we'll pay for it in aches and pains anyway.

Instead of commitment by calendar, and instead of "improvement" schemes, I'm practicing other ways of marking turning points. This year I got the book Requiem, Invitation, and Celebration: A Collection of Seasonal Practices by Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee and Lucy Wormald, from the publishers of Emergence Magazine. It's a collection of 50 practices grounded in the evolving cycle of the seasons. (More about the book in a talk by Vaughan-Lee)

The book includes "Savoring Light, for when it's the shortest day." The practice: 

"Take a walk in the afternoon for as long as the light is present. Give attention only to the rhythm of your breath and footsteps until your mind softens. Take in the presence of the light. Mid-winter, how does your body instinctively savor it? As the light of day quickly becomes dusk--the light grainy, the world looking like it belongs to a roll of old film--what does the fleeting quality of the light open in you before you are lost to the dark?"

I have to say that I'm not "lost to the dark," though, as the sun slips below the horizon, our part of the globe rotating away. I'm simply in the dark, which has its own sounds and sensations. Without the darkness, the glowing lights on my neighbors' homes wouldn't gleam so brightly. Owl wouldn't fly to find food. The coyote pack that sets up a chorus each night in the nearby park wouldn't sing their laughing songs. 

The globe keeps turning, and we're really always turning toward the light.

Poems and readings for this year's Solstice, with brief excerpts and links to the full pieces:

I read a lot of poetry but have relatively few committed to memory. One of these--ish--is Robert Frosts's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening". The "ish" led me to look it up to refresh my memory of the spot where I usually get stuck "between the woods and frozen lake." I know the rhyme scheme so if I can get past that I can keep going. 

For some reason,  reading it this time I realized it's actually a winter Solstice poem. Why, you ask? This line: "the darkest evening of the year."

"Solstice Poem"
Margaret Atwood

This is the solstice, the still point
of the sun, its cusp and midnight,

the year’s threshold
and unlocking

"Winter's Cloak"
Joyce Rupp

This year I do not want

the dark to leave me.

I need its wrap

of silent stillness,

its cloak

of long lasting embrace.

Too much light

has pulled me away

from the chamber

of gestation.

"Winter Solstice"
Kate Belew

Winter is magic

in decay, look what changes,

on the threshold of the year. Oh holy,

hinge. Step across the hearth

(earth and heart as one).

"How the Light Comes"

Jan Richardson 

I cannot tell you

how the light comes,

but that it does.

That it will.

That it works its way

into the deepest dark

that enfolds you,

though it may seem

long ages in coming

or arrive in a shape

you did not foresee.

And so

may we this day

turn ourselves toward it.

"On the Winter Solstice"
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

And I have been waiting—

which I might have denied,

snuggled in deep as I was,

drowsy and night-drunk,

certain of my joy in the dark,

but oh, such a way to wake,

discovered by the light of a star

Brianna Kocka, in What the Winter Solstice Asks of Us, provides suggestions for how we might mark the day with rest (all seven kinds), ritual, and restorative practices.

From Starhawk's Winter Solstice Message, a reminder that this year Solstice and Hanukkah occur together, both reminders of the light, and these lines: 

"And the message of Solstice, retold every year, is that just when the world grows darkest, the sun will rise again.

"We are each a little light, a small flame that needs sacred fuel to burn. Yet we can keep that flame alight, longer than we might expect, if we commit to acts of courage and compassion. On this longest night, as the Great Mother labors to bring forth the sun of the new year, we are midwives. We tend, we comfort, we empathize, we do the work. Let us bring to birth the warmth of compassion, the fire of commitment, the light of truth this year. The wheel is turning. After each night comes a new dawn."

Jennifer Hall's Lessons from the Universe essay "The Winter Solstice: Sacred Pause Before the Light Returns" reinforces the idea that we can sit with who and where we are without seeking improvement in a season of rest. She offers this invitation:

"The Winter Solstice isn’t here to rush you into the future.

It’s here to remind you that light is inevitable, even when you can’t yet see it.

Honor the pause.

Trust the dark.

Let the return of the light meet you where you are.

That’s how cycles close with grace.

And that’s how new ones begin with clarity."

Brigit Anna McNeill shares beautiful illustrations by several artists in her piece "Winter Solstice: The Long Night that Knows Our Names." She closes with this blessing:

"May this solstice meet you gently.

May it remind you that you are not late, broken, or lost.

You are wintering, as all living things must.

And somewhere beneath the quiet, the light is already on its way."

I went on a fabulous trip to England this fall with family and finally got to see Stonehenge, a lifelong dream. I couldn't go right up to it since they have it roped off. The benefit of that was that we could get pictures of the stones without people all around them. We also visited Avebury, a much larger circle although without the lintel crosspieces and much more worn, and the Rolling-Right standing stones, a small site. At Avebury and Rolling-Right we saw the remains of offerings people had left there at the equinox, just a week or two before we visited. This picture of Stonehenge isn't mine; I'm sharing it for the glow of the sunset through the stones, which people will view on the winter solstice. 

When we watch the light pass, we have to remember to watch (and work) for the light to return.

Related Reading

• Winter Solstice 2024
• Winter Solstice Readings and More
• Winter Solstice Readings
• A Solstice Post: Gifts I Give Myself by Riding in the Winter
• How to End One Year and Begin Another
• Walking a Path
• Commitment, Bite-Sized and Tasty