MONTREAL | CANNING FRUITS WORKSHOP

If you don’t know about Preservation Society already, you will now. Camilla Wynne is a rockstar. No, really. Before making jam her full time gig (pun intended), she was in a band touring and being a rockstar. She is totally girl-crush worthy and you can read about her in this interesting article from The Gazette. Bonus – I assure you she is great in person too.

So let’s back up about 3 decades. I grew up in a house that had a basement full of food (and farm animals, a washing machine, dryer and the occasional flood for that matter). Jars of my mom’s pickles and jams lined the shelves and the freezers were always filled with lamb from the farm or deer from our 300 acre property. Back then, it was just normal. We grew our own berries and veggies and my mom put them in jars for the winter months. We would all enjoy the smell of strawberries simmering on the stove top and my mom would let us scoop out the foam that sits at the top of the pot. Delicious strawberry pond scum. Or get so fed up of the sweet smell of boiling sap that filled up the entire house during the spring my dad decide to make a lot of maple syrup from the trees in the front yard.

I took all that for granted back in the day and now I crave those traditions in my own life and home. [Minus the meat aspect – but I respect people who grow their own animals humanely and feed their family with the meat. It’s just not for me.] I’ve been curious about making jam the last few years but the whole boiling and sealing and bacteria stuff just scared me out of trying. It seemed too complicated to bother and I didn’t want to accidentally kill me – or my family. Instead, I asked for my mom’s homemade pesto and strawberry rhubarb jam for my birthday presents.

I’ve decided to put on my big girl panties and learn how to make my own damn jam (and this way I don’t have to wait for my birthday or christmas! That’s a lie, my mom provides me with jam on demand). I had known about Preservation Society for a little over a year, her fall sweater jam is a favorite. I’ve been really into jam on toasted bread from local bakeries lately and I’m going through it all so fast. When I read the article in the Gazette, I figured it was time to learn how to make jam.

A small group of us arrived on a sunday afternoon for the workshop, in a large industrial loft in the mile end. Camilla was very welcoming with homemade pop-tarts, our very own jar of jam to take home and a brochure with important jamming information. We sat down, talked about ourselves a little and then learned the technical stuff and the dos and the don’ts of canning. Then we watched and assisted Camilla while she made a cranberry/sugar/orange/cinnamon/clove/port jam as well as a batch of rhubarb and strawberries in syrup.

I’ve yet to put my new knowledge to work but I definitely plan on trying a few small batches when life slows down a little this fall. (I saw some great cranberries at the market recently and I definitely want to recreate that jam.) Camilla recently published her first cookbook, Les conserves selon Camilla full of recipes. I can’t wait for the book to come out in english.

Continue reading for more photos from the workshop….