I just finished eating my share of an absolutely delicious pizza: A crust made with King Arthur never-bleached flour according to my next-door-neighbor's prized pizza dough recipe, cheese from a Vermont cheesemaker, and a fabulous rich-flavored roasted veggie pizza sauce made by my buddy Skip Woodard, the marketing manager at Sweet Clover Market in Essex, Vermont. I had swapped Skip for this jar last year and then neglected it on my pantry shelf since it had disguised itself as one of my own canning jars, since we both use the same Ball Brand canning jars and lids. Finding it this afternoon, as I had just come back from a long hot day of sitting at a tag sale table raising money for my daughter's high school's graduation festivities, was like a mini-Christmas present, I was that excited about it.
An hour and a half later, biting into crisp, right-out-of-the-oven pizza, I found my excitement was well founded. Not only can homemade pizza sauce not be beat--but someone else's homemade pizza sauce is even better. It's like when someone else has cooked you dinner when you are tired or don't feel well or have traveled a long way--you know how good that tastes?
I love to swap canned goods with people in part to get that someone-else-cooked-me-dinner sensation over and over again, but also just to mix up the flavors and textures and get a taste of something new. I make pesto that we use for pizza frequently, and what I consider "plain old pizza sauce" which is my tomato-onion-garlic-green peppers-oregano cooked down until it's thick variety, with a touch of sugar, salt, and olive oil. It's wonderful, but after 8 or 10 pizzas with it on 8 or 10 sequential weekends, it's nice to try something different.
Photo by Jack Rowell
I also like to swap jars to get home-canned items that I don't make myself. For example, I make wonderful bread and butter pickles--both the originals from my Great Aunt Margaret's recipe, and my own lemon-ginger variation. However, confession, my couple of attempts at dill pickles have failed miserably. A couple other notable canners in my town, however, make splendid dills. Since pickles seem to make themselves into several dozen jars with no warning, and there are only so many pickles one can eat in a year, I make my bread and butters then swap a few jars for some dill spears and chips, and wind up with a whole variety of pickles when ever anyone has a hankering for them.
I'm a fiddlehead fanatic and always freeze and can some up. I find a number of my male hunting and fishing friends are fond of other wild foods like fiddleheads, so I swap them canned fiddleheads (or jars of rowan jelly, a Scottish treat with winter game meats) for fish or a bucket full of wild leeks or elderberries they've picked on their hunting ventures.
Want to expand the fun of the bounty even further? Hold a jar-swap dinner party! And hey Skip, you aren't by any chance making that roasted pizza sauce again are you later this summer? 'Cuz DANG was that good!
An hour and a half later, biting into crisp, right-out-of-the-oven pizza, I found my excitement was well founded. Not only can homemade pizza sauce not be beat--but someone else's homemade pizza sauce is even better. It's like when someone else has cooked you dinner when you are tired or don't feel well or have traveled a long way--you know how good that tastes?
I love to swap canned goods with people in part to get that someone-else-cooked-me-dinner sensation over and over again, but also just to mix up the flavors and textures and get a taste of something new. I make pesto that we use for pizza frequently, and what I consider "plain old pizza sauce" which is my tomato-onion-garlic-green peppers-oregano cooked down until it's thick variety, with a touch of sugar, salt, and olive oil. It's wonderful, but after 8 or 10 pizzas with it on 8 or 10 sequential weekends, it's nice to try something different.
I also like to swap jars to get home-canned items that I don't make myself. For example, I make wonderful bread and butter pickles--both the originals from my Great Aunt Margaret's recipe, and my own lemon-ginger variation. However, confession, my couple of attempts at dill pickles have failed miserably. A couple other notable canners in my town, however, make splendid dills. Since pickles seem to make themselves into several dozen jars with no warning, and there are only so many pickles one can eat in a year, I make my bread and butters then swap a few jars for some dill spears and chips, and wind up with a whole variety of pickles when ever anyone has a hankering for them.
I'm a fiddlehead fanatic and always freeze and can some up. I find a number of my male hunting and fishing friends are fond of other wild foods like fiddleheads, so I swap them canned fiddleheads (or jars of rowan jelly, a Scottish treat with winter game meats) for fish or a bucket full of wild leeks or elderberries they've picked on their hunting ventures.
Want to expand the fun of the bounty even further? Hold a jar-swap dinner party! And hey Skip, you aren't by any chance making that roasted pizza sauce again are you later this summer? 'Cuz DANG was that good!
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