 Hi, my name is Julie Gardin Robinson and I'm your host for today's Field to Fork webinar. This is brought to you by North Dakota State University Extension. This is the ninth year we have done this series and we're really glad you joined us again today. Many of you have been loyal coming every week. We have archived all the webinars from the previous years and from the previous weeks this year and the link is on the Field to Fork webinar page. And I want to do a shout out for our watch parties across the state. Welcome to everyone who's in a group. We also are providing a certificate of attendance on our website. It is posted with the recording, which will come out in a couple days. The next slide shows the upcoming webinars and we hope you join us for these as well. Our next slide shows the webinar controls and because of our large number of participants, we invite you to post your questions and comments in the chat. So let's practice. I know a lot of you know how to do this. Find the chat box, ignore the Q&A box, and click to open the chat and type your city and state where you are. While you're doing that, the next slide provides an acknowledgement. I have a special request on this problem, this program is sponsored in part with grant funding from the USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service. And I will ask all of you to complete the short survey. It will be emailed right after today's webinar. And as a thank you, I will continue to provide prizes to the lucky winners of the random drawings. And yes, we have been sending out prizes every week. So be sure to include your address on the follow-up form. And you will need to scroll down to today's date because we are combining our date from 2023 and 2024. So the later dates are down the list. Again, welcome to today's webinar and I'm very pleased to introduce today's speaker, whom I've known for many years, Barb Ingham is a professor of food science and extension food safety specialist for the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Over her career, she has taught hundreds of educators and consumers techniques for safe home food preservation and enjoyed every minute, by the way. In the spring, summer and fall, Barb and her family enjoy both gardening and biking around the Midwest. Welcome Barb. Thank you very much, Julie. This is a topic, as Julie mentioned, that is near and dear to my heart. We'll have, it's a pretty much an overview of home food preservation. And we're going to keep you active with our content today. So many of you are in the chat letting us know where you're dialing in from today. But I'm kind of curious why you preserve food at home, what experience you might have. Created a few ideas and abundant harvest, you know, what are we going to do with all of these tomatoes? Perhaps you have family meal or dietary preferences. That might be a reason that kind of leads you into home food preservation. Capturing the peak of flavor, it would be great if we could, if we could indeed get tomatoes just ripe off the vine in the middle of winter, certainly here in the upper Midwest. But there may be other reasons or those may be the reasons that you have as well. So in the chat, just answer quickly, why do you preserve food at home? I see someone is mentioning that they don't want to waste food. They don't want to waste produce. And, you know, I do think that's a reason that has come onto the scene a little more recently. We are more cognizant of being more aware of the environmental impact of food that could is usable, that might be wasted. Somebody has also indicated that it's just fun. Maybe there's something that you can preserve at home that you can't easily get in the grocery store. I like someone indicating that better quality of food, you know, when we put our whole hearts into what we're preserving, not only does it nourish our bodies, but it also nourishes our soul as well. So many of these are reasons that we might preserve food at home. Now I'm going to ask you to follow up on that. So what is your favorite item to preserve at home? So we have lots of reasons, lots of really wonderful reasons that we might preserve food at home. But I see tomatoes have already entered the chat. You know, that is one thing that is always on my to-do list in August of every year. That's not necessarily my favorite, but it's my go-to. I'm definitely going to do that. And generally, I'll try something new as well each year. Oh, somebody said peaches. I don't have access to peaches, but that sounds like a really great idea. Someone is just typing in beats. I actually pickle beats and find that that's something that you either like them or you don't like them. And my family happens to really like pickled beats, gooseberry jam, jam's, jellies and pickles, all sorts of great favorites that we might have to preserve at home. And if you're like me living here in the upper Midwest, we've had a taste of what appears to be summerish weather. And now we're back to it's cold. And snow is expected. So this is a little bit of a tease today. So we're going to kind of operate at that high level, an overview. I'm going to provide you with some hints in terms of where to find some really great information. But we're also going to keep in the back of our mind. We want to make sure that we're doing things safely so that when we share food with our family and friends, that we know that we're providing them with things that are healthy for them. So we're going to look at that as well as some quality issues. Those peer of those building blocks. Excuse me, follow up to date research tested recipes. And you'll see that as we go through. I'll definitely point you in the direction for those. Start slowly, match the method with your goals. I have answered questions over many years and this is where. We have lots of great ideas, maybe there's a family tradition. We want to continue, but sometimes we just need to. To test something out and make sure that it's going to leave us with the quality that we're interested in. And we'll talk about that a little bit today. And then the other kind of foundational goal that we have or bit of information is to use the correct equipment. Luckily, home food preservation equipment is widely available to us at really quite reasonable prices that allow us to produce just a wide variety of food safely for our family. But we do want to make sure that we're using probably an example that I could give here is we don't use hot pots or insta pots for home canning. We want to use equipment that we know has been tested for home canning. So use the correct equipment. I can really start kind of the meat of our presentation indicating that we do know that there. There are unsafe practices is regardless of the fact that your extension educators in your state will have been working to provide you with information that allows you to produce safe, high quality foods at home. We do know that not everybody is aware of practices that they may have perhaps that may be unsafe or they're looking at sources of information that we know are not the best. So a survey that was done by the National Center for Home Food Preservation of 800 over 800 households completed the survey about 51 percent used family and friends for their their recipes and 17 percent cookbooks. We're going to redirect you today to research tested recipes from the National Center for Home Food Preservation and your local extension office. 30 percent admitted to altering recipes, which is something that makes some of us quite nervous. And when we look at what's referred to at least historically as open kettle canning. So taking a food, heating it up in a pot, putting it in a jar, putting the lid on the jar and the process is done. There is no real canning afterwards. That's open kettle canning. In the survey, it was noted that 44 percent of individuals, this is how they process or this is how they processed fruits and tomatoes, 35 percent for vegetables, so potentially a low acid food and meats and seafood 20 percent. So we know that we have a lot of work to do, both as extension educators and as you learn things from today. I hope that you will share what you know to help your family and friends do things safely. So one of the favorite things that we still tell our daughter, who is now in her 20s, has graduated college, is stop and think. And so here, stop, think and make food safe choices. I'm again highlighting some information that's quite current in terms of those unsafe practices. So dishwasher canning, the web's websites are great. Allow us to find a lot of information, but not necessarily safe canning information. So here's just a picture that I took from dishwasher canning. The hint from the site was be sure to use the power scrub cycle. And supposedly that was safe canning. And then there was oven canning. The picture that I have here is from Pinterest is showing you how to oven can tomatoes. That's a highly unsafe practice. And then not too long ago, in January of 2021, about three years ago, Bon Appétit Test Kitchen. We think of this as a reputable magazine for cooking recipes and those kind of things. They put out a recipe for seafood canning in a boiling water canner. A highly unsafe practice. So this information is out there. It's pretty widely available. We want to kind of redirect things today. So that we're starting at a better base. So trusted, tested, tested to make sure that it's not only safe but high quality. So I'm going to present you with some sources of this information. And then we're going to dive into some of the details. The National Center for Home Food Preservation. People like me are on that website pretty much every week. And they have redesigned their website. It's a lot of great information. So NCHFP.UGA.EDU is that website. That's the National Center for Home Food Preservation. It's located at the University of Georgia. They have information organized a little bit differently with a new website released earlier this month. It allows you to quickly focus in on recipes where you can preserve by canning, pickling, freezing, drying, fermenting, smoking and curing. There's information on storing and more. So that's a kind of the really go to source for many of us answering questions in home food preservation. Our own group here in the upper Midwest, the North Central Food Safety Extension Group has our network has increasingly excellent information for those of you who are interested in home food preservation. Something that you may consider. We have a bi-monthly e-mail newsletter that you can subscribe to that brings information right to your inbox every two months, often on topics of preparing food, preserving food and storing food. So that's something to consider signing up for. And our educator group, our network, has been trying to create some tip sheets on information where we just get a lot of calls. So there's one on oops, if you need to remake jams and jellies, we've got hints on doing that safely and to end up with high quality product, safe canning substitutions and information on steam canning. Some of that research having been done at the University of Wisconsin in Madison a number of years ago. I do want to highlight safe canning substitutions is not only a handout, but in a couple of weeks, I believe it's April 10th. My colleague in Kansas, Karen Blakesley, will be at the in the field of work or presenting in the field of work webinar. And she's going to talk about safe canning substitutions. It's really a highlight and will help you kind of move through this upcoming canning season with a lot of confidence. So we're talking about canning and we often do because there's so many questions, but we're going to hit the highlights on canning, freezing, drying and fermenting today. So which method of home food preservation is best? Well, some questions that you probably want to ask yourself as you choose a method of preserving is how much product do you have to process? You know, I think canning can be great for bushels of tomatoes. If I'm thinking I'm going to dry those tomatoes, I just don't have that much space in my dehydrator. So it might be quantity of product. What are the quality you're looking for? You know, freezing is one type of food preservation that captures so much of that just fresh quality. When we go through a thermal process that we have with canning, some things change, especially the color of green items like green beans. So we're going to have something that's a little softer and the color may change. So is it a quality issue, a quality product, the quality of a product that you're trying to replicate might help you in your choice or tested recipes available. You'll notice we'll talk briefly about fermentation. If you happen to go to the National Center for home food preservation, you'll find just two recipes on their site for home food for fermentation. I'm going to give you some hints on finding more, but we don't have a lot of research that supports some of our home preservation activities that we may be interested in. So is a tested recipe available? And then do you have that right equipment? Again, making sure that you're using equipment that's designed to help you produce safe product. So again, drying, making jams and jellies, pickling, canning, fermenting, all of these maybe things, the right decision with the right equipment. OK, so we're going to hit the highlights for canning, starting off with that pressure canning is at the top of our mind when we can, whether we pressure can or whether we can in a boiling water canner or a steam canner. The huge, I want to say huge advantage, but an advantage of canning certainly is that the products if canning done correctly, the products are safe on the shelf. You know, many of us find our freezers by the end of the harvest season, they're full. And so we can look to canning to preserve things like tomatoes or maybe applesauce and those kind of things where we don't have to dedicate freezer space to those items. And then our pantries, of course, look wonderful with all these home preserved items. And then often meal prep is easy. You know, a soup may be mixing several different jars, jar of tomatoes, perhaps some meat or chicken. Maybe you want to add other vegetables, corn or what have you. And those are mixed together and you've got an easy, quick, delicious soup for your family. So meal prep is easy because the cooking really is already done. That product is basically ready to eat straight out of the jar. We generally reheat things for for comfort and so that they taste the way that we're looking to. But once a jar once a food is properly canned, it is ready to eat. So we have boiling water canning or steam canning. I've got pictures of both there on the left hand side of our screen for naturally acid foods, which would be most fruits. And then for acidified foods, pickles and salsa, those were where we're adding acid so that to ensure safety of the can product. The other type of canning is, of course, pressure canning. This is what we look to to preserve, safely preserve low acid foods. These would be meats or vegetables. In this particular slide, I'm just highlighting with pressure canning, the picture of the type of kitchen appliance that's on the bottom right. I've made a note that if you have a pressure canner that is a dial gauge canner, you want to make sure that that dial is registering accurately and many county extension offices have the ability to test dial gauge canners against a reference gauge that the county office will have. Otherwise, that's something that if you purchased your presto, your canner from presto, presto industries will also test those dial gauges for free. Here on this slide, I'm focusing on weighted gauge canners because we have slightly different styles of weighted gauge canners in terms of how what that weight looks like. The really traditional weighted gauge canner and the one that I first used, certainly for a weighted gauge canner, has is one round weight and then on that have the ability, based on how you place that weight on the canner, you can use it. We'll let you know that you're whether you're processing at five, 10 or 15 pounds of pressure. The newer some of the newer canners have weight. Some of them you have a different weight for five versus 10 versus 15 pounds. And then another style altogether is a weight, a weight that where you add multiple rings, one for five, one for 10 and one for 15 pounds. It's really important that a weighted gauge canner does have this ability to to register five, 10 and 15 pounds of canner. I note at the bottom of this slide here, an all American canner Wisconsin is amazing that historically the three canner companies that we find Miro, all American and Presto, those businesses are headquartered in Wisconsin. At one point, all of the canners were made in the state of Wisconsin. That's not true that they're all manufactured here, but they are still headquartered here are American canning companies. Anyway, all American is a is a different type of canner. It has these the the lid rather than being twisting on and locking into place has these wing nuts that allow the the the lid to lock in place with the base. As a result, we use a gauge on these all American canners to let us know when the canner is pressurizing or when it is then depressurized at the end of the canning process. However, I note here that that in an in an all American canner, specifically the weighted the weight is not what we use for canning. So we actually don't have to have this gate gauge checked every year. And all American canner is a weighted gauge canner. So it will have the round weight that we would have historically seen on weighted gauge canners, a little bit more of the traditional weight style. So all American canners are weighted gauge canners. The dial is for reference. It's that kind of a pressurized reference. So it lets you know when you can safely take the lid off the canner at the end of the time. But the gauge is not used to register, you know, eleven pounds pressure or twelve pounds of pressure or whatever have you based on your elevation. So for the National Center for Home Food Preservation, we have some great information about canning. Again, that's our North Central Regional Group. We have a handout called Pressure Can It Right that gives you some hints on canning. And then on the National Center for Home Food Preservation, you can search for using pressure canners. I do say that if you're if you still have the the guidebook that comes with your canner, that is a great source of information, not necessarily recipes, but it's a great source of how to use your canner. So I recommend just giving that a thumb, thumbing through that at the start of the canning season. So we do want to take care with canning. And I'm asking you again to go to the chat, which bacterium is the greatest concern in canned food? So why do we have recipes written and developed the way that we do? What are we worried about in canned food? Are we worried about A. Salmonella, E. E. Coli, perhaps pathogenic E. Coli, C. Clostridium botulinum or D. You might say there are no bacteria in canned food. So I'm looking at the chat and I'm seeing some great responses here. Our response is C. Clostridium botulinum. It's a picture here on the right hand side, the upper picture. It's a spore forming organism that that if the spores are find their way into a food that perhaps is improperly processed and the processes in the product is low in acid, those spores can germinate. And someone has placed in the chat absolutely correct that clostridium botulinum, the spores germinate. They produce a toxin that's actually in that food product. And that toxin can cause botulism poisoning. So at the bottom of this slide, I've put I don't know if it's my favorite comment or my least favorite comment. I can kind of under when I'm talking to someone on the phone that response, but I've always done it that way. And I will tell you when I started my the job that I now have 27 years ago, I was stunned to find that I had to add acid to tomato products because my mother had never done that. And when I was off canning, when I was in college, I had never done that. And so all of a sudden I land at the University of Wisconsin and late in the 1990s, there was we started to see a sea change certainly in canning of tomatoes. And we now know that we need to add acid to tomato products. But just because you've always done it that way, you might have been lucky. But we want to make sure that what we can is safe for family and friends and high quality. So I really do encourage you to check those recipes. And I know it's a favorite cookbook. That some of us have for many of the recipes for meals, items that are placed on the table. But your canning recipes need to be different. Those need to be updated periodically as the science changes. These organisms change and we need to be smart about how we're preparing food for our family. So just because you've always done it that way, doesn't mean you should continue. In pressure canning, I want to highlight the fact why, because this sometimes is, you know, why do we need? Why do we use pressurized vessels? Specifically when we're canning low acid foods, meats and vegetables. So temperature is key and the way that we're getting the temperatures that we need is because of pressure. So temperature is always key. So for acid foods, so fruits, pickles, salsa, those tested recipes, we have food that's either submerged in boiling water or it's surrounded by pure steam if we're using a steam canner. And here the heat moves around the jars of food and actually touches the walls of the jar and moves into the food and then begins to circulate so that we eventually, at the end of our process, will make sure that we have enough heat that's going to circulate in our jars so that all parts of our food are going to receive a minimum heat treatment. For low acid foods, this is where pressure comes into play. So water boils depending on your elevation here in Madison, Wisconsin, about 210 to 212 degrees in the area. It's a little bit hilly here. So we might see water boiling 210 to 212. As we have that water boiling and pressure is building because the water continues to boil in the base of our canner, pressure builds in our canner at six pounds of pressure. That water, say here in Madison, is now boiling at about 230 degrees. When we reach 10 pounds of pressure, it's boiling around 239 and by 15 pounds of pressure in Madison, it's boiling at 250 degrees. So based on your elevation, you may have to use higher pressures to get these higher temperatures. So what happens in a pressure canner is water boils as it would at sea level, but because it's under pressure, that water is actually going to boil at a higher pressure. And so we still have water boiling, steam created, steam moving towards the jar and transferring heat into through the jar, into the glass and into the container. And this high heat and pressure canning is needed to destroy those botulism spores so we don't have that toxin formed in the jars. If we have enough acid, the acid actually can kind of work for us to keep the spores themselves from germinating. So one hint, if you aren't in the habit of doing this, something to pick up from today's presentation, be sure to vent your canner. This is a pressure canner. When you're venting a pressure canner, you're going to let that steam just kind of shoot out of the canner. I kind of think it looks like a train whistle because we need an environment of pure steam. Air is an insulator. It is in our down jackets in the middle of winter. So air transfers heat very differently than steam. We need pure steam in that canner so that we can achieve the high pressure that we need for spore destruction. All right. So let's going to wrap up this. I do see some great questions. We are going to save plenty of time. So we're going to have lots of Q&A for questions. And I know Julie is helping me keep track of those. Keep writing those in the chat. We'll kind of handle those at the end. So here's just a summary for safe canning. We add acid to tomatoes when canning. Again, if you're like me, this was a real eye opener a numbers of years ago, citric acid or bottled lemon juice and look for recipes that call for those ingredients that will help ensure that your product is safe. For crispy cucumbers. This is something I know many of us have struggled with over the years. Just quick things we can do. Trim that blossom in just a little bit. The enzymes that are involved in softening are concentrated in that blossom in. We also make sure we remove the any soil that might be in the stem and pickle them fresh. Cucumbers do not like to sit in your refrigerator on your counter. They kind of like to go from the garden into your pickling brine. You may historically have used alum for pickling. There are some recipes that you can find that are research tested that may say that you may you could use alum. You might find some commercial products that still use alum. Alum, however, is an aluminum salt. It's aluminum sulfate. Research has shown that there appears to be in a link between individuals with Alzheimer's disease and aluminum in the brain. There is no link that says it comes from home canned items. However, this simply tells us that there are other ways to have crisp pickles. So avoiding alum is is perhaps a good decision. So avoid alum if you if you would all can and use pickling lime. Again, there may there's a research tested recipes that say that that tell you how to use pickling lime safely, but use it only in a tested recipe and make sure that you rinse the cucumbers very well after that liming process because lime moves the pH of that product, the acidity in the wrong direction. So we want to make sure to do that properly. If we want to prevent floating fruit, I should say that 10 times fast floating fruit. So just a hint, I make a lot of jam. My husband and daughter have we use bread as a jam delivery system where there's a small piece of bread and about a half a jar of jam. So we let jam rest for five or ten minutes. You've taken it off the heat. You've boiled it as you need to. You take it off the heat, you may be skimming the foam off, which you may you you can certainly leave the foam there if you want. It's a little bit prettier if you take the foam off, but allow that fruit to then to absorb some of that sugar that will help the your fruit not to float to kind of distribute better in your jar of jam, just in general for fruits. Again, that maybe you may see floating a hot pack method in general, whether it's tomatoes as your fruit or other types, peaches or or pears or other things. A hot pack method is going to tend to help that fruit stabilize prior to the canning process. And you'll have often less trouble with floating fruit and using heavy syrup. Now, some of us for dietary reasons don't do that. But these are all tips that can help your fruit may be more evenly distributed in that jar. It's cosmetic. There's no reason that you can't have all of the fruit at the top of your jam jar. So just things to think about. It is really important to use approved lids and jars. And remember, sometimes it's a spouse or something like that that wants to really crank on that band when they're tightening the lid. Lids finger tip tight. Very often if if a jar is broken or people have lids that don't seal, it's because the lid was tightened too tightly and include a canning process. Again, this is we don't want this open kettle canning, which basically puts the food in the jar and stops right there, puts the lid on and is sometimes done for shelf stability, for quality and safety. We do need a canning process. We do remove those bands usually for storage. OK, so again, back to the chat. So what do you think? What is key to canning safe food for your family? Is it the jars all sealed? That's A. B is, well, most of the jars sealed. C is OK. Some of the jars sealed or D is you followed an up to date research tested recipe exactly as written and the jars all sealed. OK, so that's pretty easy, right? To know an up to date research tested recipe exactly as written. That means including that that thermal process and the jars are sealed. There you go. You got product in your pantry for those winter meals. All right, freezing. We're going to move on to that really quickly here. So tips on freezing, freezing, blanch vegetables for quality prior to freezing. So it doesn't say safety, it says quality. So many vegetables do benefit from a blanching process. A blanching process is that quick heat process. Generally, if you're blanching process, let's say your blanching process is three minutes, your cooling process is three minutes. If your branching process is one minute, then we cool in ice water for one minute. So that's a really quick indicator of when you're trying to remember how long to cool products after that heat treatment. So blanching, what blanching does it in activate some enzymes. It removes microorganisms, kills those off that are on the surface of our product, what have you. So it's really important to pretty much stabilize the product. The nice thing about the freezer is kind of what goes into the freezer other than the fact that we might see some loss of cellular integrity. But from a color standpoint, we see things pretty similar, what goes into the freezer comes out of the freezer. But and here's an important reminder. Freezing does not kill microorganisms, not all of them, certainly. If you're like me and you bake bread, bread is we use yeast and baking many of the breads that we bake at home. Bread, I'm sorry, yeast is a microorganism. And some people like me store our yeast in the freezer. I expect to pull that yeast out and then I add that yeast by tablespoon into my warm, generally warm water prior at the start of my bread making process. So freezing is not designed to kill microorganisms. So remember, if we do have things that we've frozen, either we've done so or even commercial product that we want to make sure we thought and we cook things, vegetables specifically before eating. So whether they're commercially frozen peas or peas that you've frozen at home, do cook those before you eat them. Fruits have some acid in them, so it's a little bit different, but certainly vegetables package to keep oxygen in and moisture out. Aluminum foil is great for that. And sometimes maybe aluminum foil plus a freezer bag or what have you. Glass also works really well. The problem with glass, of course, is it's breakable for best quality, label and use within one year. In a freezer, things are not going to become unsafe. You will see lipid oxidation. So you'll notice that fattier items are going to go rancid on you even in the freezer. Other reactions, however, are stopped because of the freezing temperatures. So one year for quality, if you happen to keep things more than one year, they will be safe to consume as long as they've been kept frozen and use a freezer to help prevent food waste. This is a really as we become more conscious of making sure that what we purchase or what we grow is actually something that we eat because there are a lot of people who don't have food and we want to make sure that we're doing our part. So best practices, again, the National Center for Home Food Preservation at the University of Georgia has information on freezing those blanching times and tips on storage and local extension offices as well. Drawing foods at home. If you haven't dried foods at home before, it's really kind of fun. It allows you to make products that, you know, are just very dissimilar from canning and freezing. Those are somewhat similar. So the National Center has information on drying foods at home. You do want to purchase an appliance that will that will allow you to end up with with product that you're happy with. You can use your oven for drying, although you're going to tie that oven up for a pretty long period of time. Maybe something will be on your oven for five to eight to 12 hours at a low temperature. So that for many of us, we're not comfortable, perhaps with our ovens tied up for that long period of time. But there are recommendations given for oven drying as well. So drying foods at home. We often pretreat light colored fruits, especially so that they aren't brown. They don't brown during the drying process. Browning, however, is a quality issue. If things brown a little bit, it doesn't mean that it's unsafe. Make sure that you have a dehydrator that where you can set the temperature that you need. If you're drying something like meat, you need a higher temperature to ensure safety than you would for certainly for fruits and consider both quantity and quality. A drying or dehydrating isn't a great way to get bushels and bushels through. It just doesn't allow the length of the time needed for drying doesn't allow that. But some tips on if you have dried vegetables, you might use like dry tomatoes and dry them. I take tomatoes and I actually dry them such that they're brittle and I dry them and then I grind them in a coffee grinder. And then I might use that tomato powder. Then if I'm a flavoring pasta or bread or adding just that extra burst of flavor to soup. So this works really well, specifically with vegetables, mushrooms, tomatoes. You could do it for onions, peppers, dry them really, really well. You can add dried fruits. Usually we keep a little bit more moisture in those to cereals, to breads, just as a snack and then again to avoid food waste. Drying is a great way. I sometimes do that if I have too many tomatoes to can or smaller tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, more than we can eat, I'll throw some of those on a dehydrator and create some kind of sun dried type tomatoes that I might be able to add to pasta or into a salad. So freeze drying is a new frontier. We don't have any research tested recipes that I'm aware of yet from some searching that I did. But the National Center has assured us that they're going to be looking in that area. Contact your county extension office for more information as well. The last type of food preservation, we're just going to briefly hint, touch on is fermenting. And just a reminder that in the fermentation process, we use those microorganisms that cause things like spoilage or may cause us to make to get sick. There's a whole lot of other microorganisms that help us create beneficial products such as when we make yogurt, when we make bread, perhaps when we make sauerkraut or genuine dill pickles. The fermentation process is generally one of two pathways. Lactic acid fermentation. This is the tang that we find in sauerkraut. In genuine dill pickles, the bacteria that are naturally on cabbage or cucumbers with the right amount of salt in fermentation brine, they actually consume sugars that are naturally perhaps in cabbage and they consume the sugars and produce acid. And this acid increases as the fermentation process goes on, drops the pH and we have that delicious tang. Another pathway for fermentation is through the production of alcohol, ethanol. Here, I said bubbles with a kick. Here, it's the same. Maybe we have yeast in the fermentation of beer or wine. So here, yeast are again consuming sugars that are a natural part of a fruit or a grain. And as they consume those sugars, they're actually producing either or both ethanol and carbon dioxide. So the carbon dioxide is the bubbles that we see produced. Either can be a food safety hazard, if not done safely. So there are two recipes on the National Center site for fermenting. One sauerkraut and genuine dill pickles. You may find some other pickling type recipes also on other extension sites. The National Center doesn't have information on making wine at home, although some universities have created some excellent resources. So here at the bottom of this slide, I'm going to direct you to this comment. If you're looking for reliable research, tested information, perhaps on freeze drying, perhaps on making wine at home or home brewing of beer. If you just go to your standard search engine, Google is often used. I'll use that as an example. And say if I was searching at the bottom of my slide here on the right, if I'm searching for making wine at home, that's the term that I want to use. And so I said I typed that into my search bar. After that term, making wine at home, making beer at home, I type also include this phrase. I've put it in red on my slide. Of course, you don't use it in red when you're typing it into a search engine. But you type site, S-I-T-E, like for a website and then a colon and then a space and then dot E-D-U. This will narrow certainly early on in your results. This will narrow your results to those websites that have that dot E-D-U extension. Where I'm from in Wisconsin, we have WISC W-I-S-C dot E-D-U. So information that we've created and posted on websites will come up if you had, you know, making wine at home site dot or steam canning, steam canning site dot E-D-U or perhaps Wisconsin, our information on that. Or again, our our North Central region. So that's just a way if the National Center doesn't have it, if you're we don't have in Wisconsin information on making wine at home. I believe it's Washington State, Oregon, others states, however, do have that. So that's a great way to narrow your search so that you're more likely to find research that's reliable online. So when you're preserving up to date, research tested recipes start slow, match the method with your goals, use the correct equipment, make sure you ask those questions. It's a lot easier for your educators in your state to answer a question at the start of the process versus at the end. None of us likes to tell you to throw away your 12 quarts of tomatoes, but on occasion that has to happen. Once you know the correct methods, we do encourage you to share what you what you know, what you're trained and and once you're comfortable with what you're doing, using research tested recipes. There are a lot of people who don't know that information. So please share what you know so that others also have safe information. I'm going to turn to Julie to answer your questions from today. If for some reason we don't get to your question and you really, really, really want it answered here is my email address, and I'm happy to either refer you to the educator who may be in your state or to try to help you answer this. So with Julie, I'll kind of open it up and see what we have. I've seen some great questions come through. You have lots of questions, Barb, so you better have a sip of coffee. Um, first one that came in is making freezer jam safe. Freezer jam is safe. And, you know, it's a great way to kind of start the process. The quality is different. It's going to be a little bit grainy. So again, think about the quality that you're looking for because it doesn't have a thermal process added. It's not safe on the shelf. It will mold in your refrigerator. So as you bring it out, it needs to be stored and kept in the refrigerator. So certainly it's a safe process. You can do it. Just remember a few caveats if you go that route. Next one, can we trust the ball canning book or do we need new additions? So that's a great. So as as our information has changed, you know, at one point, 1997, wow, tomato information, we had to throw our we say up to date research tested. And ball is a great example because there's a number of us on this call today and a number of your presenters over the course of this series that are on a on a on an advisory group with ball canning. And we will tell you that ball is coming out. They have not there were a couple recipes that weren't aligned with our extension guidelines. Ball has recognized that and has made changes to their recipes. So I encourage you Mother's Day is coming up. Father's Day is coming up. If you need to follow a new cookbook of various types, not only their blue book, but some of their complete guide to canning. This is a great year to update your resources because you will find changes again so that we're better aligned across your experts in terms of canning, freezing and what have you. Great question. Thank you for asking that one. And I'll just add that there's a brand new ball canning book. They sent us proof copies if we were on the canning advisory group. So it is available. Yes, I don't know if it's available for pre-order on their site yet. And again, this goes back to what some of us learned in the pandemic. You know, go to ball. Fresh used to be fresh preserving, I think it's ball jars now. They've changed their URL, but order that either from a reputable retail, you know, Walmart's or we have Farm Fleet here in Wisconsin. I would or from ball itself, not necessarily from Amazon. So you make sure you're getting the the most recent version and look for that 2024 as a copyright date. Yeah, great question. Question about tomatoes, if tomatoes are a high acid food, why do you need to add lemon juice? That is such a great. OK, and I'm going to start this answer to this question, because it's probably one I've answered more than any, is if you actually go to your cupboard and some of us don't have commercially canned tomatoes because we can our own tomatoes. But if you go to the grocery store this week, look at hunts or red gold. And if you look at the back of those cans, you will see tomatoes, salt and citric acid. So this isn't just something we have to do as home food preservers. These are people who can thousands and thousands of cans at a time. Tomatoes or fruits. And we think about fruit. You think about an apple early in the season when it's not quite ripe. It's really different from an apple that's later in the season. The the amount of acid in fruits varies dramatically over the season. We have been breeding tomatoes and with warmer climates. Our tomato pH is rising. That means our acid is dropping. And if we have some we had some did some work on canning of tomatoes and have some data from the University of California in Davis where we have field data that shows it's inching up. It's not dramatic. It's not like, you know, it might go from three point eight to three point nine, which might not seem like a big difference. But over time that is big and it is accumulating. So based on the climate, based on varieties and based on where we are in that growing season, so I kind of think of of adding acid to tomatoes. It's kind of like a seat belt. You know, you might not want it, but we use a seat belt to keep ourselves safe. The same we're going to add acid to tomatoes in the same way. And we add acid to tomatoes even when we pressure can tomatoes. So it's not just in a boiling water canner. This is because if the pH, if we say we didn't and our pH is over four point six and we say, oh, I'll just pressure can over them. We're canning tomatoes in a pressure canner for like 90 minutes like meat and chicken. We don't have recipes that tell us how to do that. So add acid, citric acid, you can almost not tell us there. So if you're if you're wondering about the flavor, a flavor change or something, then use citric acid and again, you'll get still get that peak flavor. Great question. OK, here's one on oven canning. Is it safe to process pickled cucumbers in the oven? It is not and, you know, but you tell yourself, but wait a minute, my oven is hotter. Perhaps my oven might be at 250 degrees, right? That's hotter than my boiling water canner at two hundred and twelve. The way you can convince yourself that those two are so different is think about if you if you if you open the oven door and you're not touching anything, you're just putting your hand in an oven that's let's say it's three hundred and twelve. That's it. That's not a hot. I mean, that's warm enough, right? Don't touch anything. It's hot. It doesn't burn you immediately. If you take a pot of boiling water, two hundred and twelve, one hundred degrees cooler and you put your hand over that pot of water. The lid is off. That water is actively boiling. You are immediately burned and that helps us understand that moist air steam transfers heat much different than when that air is dry. So at oven canning, that air isn't transferring that heat from out in that oven space into your jar in it all the same way as when it's steam. So we have to the only way to safely can our pickles is using a boiling water canner. Or if you don't have a canner and you want to do something different, you can try a steam canner. Those are pretty pretty nifty appliances. So give that a try. And we'll both ask you to tell all your friends who are oven canning not to do that. Right. And that is exactly. Tell them about, you know, that pasta water at two twelve. This is your oven at three twelve. It's just from a physics standpoint and I'm not not a physics person. It's really different. Right. OK. Now we have we're getting low on time, but I'm going to pick out two very hot questions that I often get. What is your opinion on reusable canning lids? So that's a great question. The National Center had done some work on the Tatler lids. Unfortunately, I don't believe they ever published it. The early indications were that use of a Tatler lid, what doing using it correctly up to 10 times, it would safely seal a jar. Unfortunately, we don't have, like I said, information that helps us know for sure. We haven't seen that published for that. But that was an early indication. Perhaps the National Center will pick that research back up for that. We know for sure that these two piece lids that we purchase from ball or under a curb brand or something are safe and acceptable for home canning. OK, here's a perfect question for Barb, because I believe you did a lot of this research. Has the steam canner style that looks like a stock pot been tested and found safe or is it only the top hat style steam canner that has been tested and found safe? That is a great question. We tested the top hat style. That was the most prevalent in the marketplace when we did our work. We did later look at the stock pot style. What we know is that steam because the steam vents at the top of the stock pot and at the base for the top hat style, the steam circulates differently in those two canners. Unfortunately, we did not have enough time to complete the research with the stock pot. So the research that we've done, we say we know it applies to the top hat style. We don't know for sure how it would apply to a stock pot style. So our recommendation is to try to find I know, unfortunately, back to basics, which made a great steam canner isn't making a steam canner. And they made the top hat style. So the marketplace has changed since we did that research. But that's a great one. Thank you for that. So final two questions I'll select. And then Barb has provided her contact information or you can feel free to contact me as well. Last two, is it safe to use an air fryer for dehydration? So I don't know that there's been research done with that. It would depend on how you stored the products. If they're not dry enough and you put them and they're low in acid like vegetables and you put them in an environment where you remove the oxygen, then it's a food safety risk or at least it's a mold risk if you store it in an environment where there's air. So quality is there. Dehydrating its general brittle brittleness for vegetables, tackiness. And you could you may be able to do that with an air fryer. You'd have to do some testing. Last question is about tomatoes. Why do we only see salsa recipes for pints and not quarts? This is a great question. And fortunately, it comes down to just with our steam canning research. No one has done the research to support canning of quarts. And I know if you're like my family, a quart is good for one meal. And you'd really like salsa around for longer. I would say this would be a great question to encourage the National Center, who is that is ramping up again. They have a new director. And if we like a recipe for canning salsa in quarts, then I would say ask them. Carla is is open to ideas. She's hoping to do some freeze drying. And this might be another way to just expand, you know, help the National Center see the type of information that we really need available to us by asking. Great. Thank you so much, Julie, for your everyone's time today. Yes, thanks, everyone, for arriving on time today and staying the whole time. We appreciate your participation and we hope to see you next week. And a big thanks to Barb for joining us again this year.