When my grandmother back in the states heard of my canning plans, she sent me 50 bucks to help. I’m happy to say, $50 in Kyrgyzstan goes along way: it more than covered the cost of all the ingredients, jars, and lids. Thanks Grandma!The results, I hope, will be well worth the effort. But if not, the experience itself made the endeavor worthwhile. While making the jam (the easiest, by far), the power went out while I was boiling the syrup, so I had to wait a day—while the apricots fermented—to finish the job. And making pickles was literally electrifying, as you’ll read below.
But canning logman (tomato/veggie) sauce and winter salad was some of the most fun I’ve had in country to date. For two days in August, I visited another volunteer’s former host mom, who is one of my favorite women in country and happens to be an incredible cook and avid canner. She led my friend Brooke and I through all the steps of prepping, stewing, and properly sterilizing vegetables. We started cutting veggies for the sauce at 1:30 on a Friday afternoon. By 2:30, we had the onions frying away in a kazan (cast iron pot) of oil. Thereafter we added peppers, carrots, tomatoes, cabbage, eggplant, and finally dill and garlic. 
All the while, Ryan’s host mom kept us in fits of laughter with stories of her initial fear of Americans (originally she didn’t want a volunteer; she thought they were all really tall and fat and had no idea what she’d feed him or her), the antics of former volunteers (she’s currently hosting her third), and her mother’s mistrust of most vegetables (she’s from Naryn, the same remote non-veggie eating part of Kyrgyzstan as we are). Her Kyrgyz is so clear we didn’t miss a word. 
The second day we canned winter salad, a vibrantly colored layering of pickled vegetables. First we diced the various ingredients; I got eggplant slicing and carrot shredding duty, Brooke took the onions, which left tears streaming down her cheeks (the onions in Kyrgyzstan are insanely strong!). After we soaked the eggplant in a salt solution, we deep-fried it. Then the fun part began. Starting with a layer of eggplant on the bottom, we added a layer of red pepper, then carrot, then onion, then tomatoes, then dill and garlic, and then began again with eggplant. Throughout the process, we smashed the layers down so we had enough room for five complete repeats of the layers. On top we added a teaspoon of salt, two teaspoons of sugar, and a teaspoon of vinegar. Then we boiled each jar for 45 minutes. As we could only do 4 jars at a time and we had 13 total, this took us the rest of the evening. Exhausted as we were when we finished, we were hungry and in need of a quick and easy dinner. Apa (we all call Ryan’s host mom, “mother”) suggested greniki, which none of us had ever heard of. Turns out, greniki is French toast, but not just any French toast. We fried freshly-picked apples for a topping and out of the recesses of a cabinet she pulled a bottle of maple syrup left from her first volunteer. I couldn’t have dreamt up a sweeter end to a perfect day.
Pickles
You may recall that my regular intake of vegetables last winter consisted almost entirely of a pickle every other day for two three months. Anticipating the oncoming vegetable famine, today I set about making my winter ration of crisp, dill-icious pickles.
I began last night by washing and soaking 8 kilos of pickles. This morning at 9 a.m., I carted the rest of the ingredients and equipment out to the kitchen, minus one very import element—the lid-sealing tool. I contemplated purchasing one at the bazaar when I bought the cucumbers, but couldn’t find one and decided someone in the village must have one I could borrow. So at 9:30, my search for the simple device commenced. My host mother has never made preserves, so it was no surprise when my sister told me the family has no such implement. I headed into the street to ask neighbors.
Shortly thereafter my aunt, and fellow teacher at the school, walked by on her way to school. Did she have the tool? Of course not, but all the teachers were congregating at the school for the annual start-of-school planning meeting, and why don’t I come along? No one had informed me previously that my attendance was required, but off I went to the meeting. I should have known what I was in for, but when I sat down I didn’t realize I’d just given up my morning.
Three hours later at the close of the meeting, I got to ask my question: did anyone have a canning tool? Of 24 teachers, not a single one owned a functioning device. I was beginning to see why the village starved during winter. After a brief conversation with my director about the fact that the neither of the school’s two English teachers would be working this year (one is expecting a baby and moved to Naryn city; the other’s husband has ordered her to stay at home and take care of his ailing father), I asked her who I should seek out for a canning tool. (For the record, I’m told I will have a fellow teacher to teach with this year, but as of yet no one has seen her or knows her name…and school starts the day after tomorrow.)
My director thought one of our family’s friends might have one, so after first going home to grab some pictures I printed from our joint families’ trip to Lake Song Kol, I headed to Jumagul Ege’s house. Today also happened to be Orozo Ait, the last day of Ramadan, so everyone in the village was preparing some variation of meal to share with friends and neighbors—but every variation included borsok, the fried bread bites that look like doughnuts but are definitely not, alas. Anyway, I found the family making borsok and was subsequently invited in for tea. I took out the pictures and quickly recapped my travels with my brother (who had joined us for the Song Kol trip). Then I asked my question.
“I used to have two tools,” she said, “But I lent them out and they never returned.” She suggested checking with another woman, and off I went. The woman was one of my best student’s mothers, and I was happy to find Kasiet at home, frying borsok, of course. I managed to repeatedly forget the Russian name of the implement I was asking for throughout the course of the day (instead, I mistakenly kept asking for whiteout), and this time was no exception. I explained what it was used for instead, and finally resorted to English, “Does your mother have one?” God bless her, she did.
So 5 hours later than I intended, I headed home, canning tool in hand. But the fun had just begun. I started by washing my three 3-litre jars and prepping the remaining ingredients—hot peppers, dill, and garlic cloves. Next, I boiled water for the syrup I’d poor over the cucumbers once I’d packed them into the jars. I consulted multiple recipes in the past week, some online a few days ago and also from our Peace Corps cookbook. They varied tremendously, so I made up my own ratios—for better or for worse—as I went along. Once boiling, I added one cup of salt to 4 quarts of water. I tasted it and thought it rather too salty, but I went with it. Next, while the pot was still boiling away on the hotplate, I attempted to pour in a half cup of very concentrated (80% vinegar). Turns out, one should not pour vinegar directly into boiling water. The result: an eruption on the scale of the volcano demonstrations kids do for the 6th grade Science Fair with the added shock of minor electrocution and momentary right arm paralysis. Yes, I’m fine, just stupid.
It’s a good thing the attempt failed however, because a half-cup of undiluted vinegar would have been way too much (even though that’s what the conversion chart on the bottle said). I added the vinegar by the spoonful once the liquid cooled. And fortunately my host mom reminded me at the last minute that I needed sugar. That made it taste a lot better.
I sterilized the jars next, boiling them in a water bath. I had to do them one at a time, but while one was boiling, I would pack the previous one with the cucumbers and other ingredients. Then I’d boil the whole jar again, with lid “on” but not sealed, for 15 minutes, then press the cap on by hand cranking the canning tool until the lip of the lid is tightly pressed to the jar’s neck. Apparently, I pressed too hard on the first one because I cut all the way through the lip of the lid—but I didn’t see this until later.
After processing 3 jars, I realized I had significantly more pickles than I needed. I washed my host mom’s last remaining 3-litre jar (I think it held paint formerly, but I got most of it off), sterilized it, packed it, and set it into the water bath to boil. Fifteen minutes later, I drew it out only to find that the bottom had blown out. Naturally. I weighed my options—salvage a small jar’s worth and spend another hour preparing it, or just use the one remaining lid to recap the jar that had somehow partially blown it’s seal, but wasn’t leaking in the slightest (they were all turned upside down). I opted for the later.
So at 6:30 I had myself three, not four, jars of pickles. They may turn out to be the spiciest, tartest pickles I’ve ever eaten, but so be it. I intend to eat every last one.
Applesauce
In perhaps the cheapest canning effort of all time, Brooke and I jarred 13 liters of applesauce last weekend for a sum total of $2—the cost of lids, a few jars, and sugar. Oh, and did I mention, it’s delicious!
Mind you, there was some significant labor involved. It started with a quest for the apples themselves Saturday morning. As it turned out, the village mayor had three fully loaded trees and was happy to let us pick to our heart’s content. Thus around 10 a.m. we found ourselves stuck high up in apple trees, giggling uncontrollably as we attempted to shake down the fruit (often impaling ourselves—and the fruit—on the branches as we went). We intended to can 10 kilos, but by 11 a.m., we found ourselves with no less than 35 kilos of apples in our bag (or so we estimate from the weight of a bag that was too heavy for either of us to pick up alone). A team effort—and a lift from a random neighbor—got us home, where the real work began. For the next 6 hours, I peeled and Brooke diced, and peeled, and diced, and…you get the point. A kind aunt stopped by for an hour and also lent a hand. (This is also the aunt who is giving me Russian lessons in exchange for English lessons.) By the end of the afternoon we had enough apple pieces to fill the huge cast iron kazan. We let the apples boil away for an hour and a half, adding just a bit of sugar and plenty of cinnamon. (Brooke, at left, is stirring the kazan. It was very hot, though perhaps the welding mask was unnecessary.)
We had only the hotplate to work with and a pot big enough only for four jars at a time, so the process was slow going. We’d sterilize the jars, fill them, set the lids on top, boil them for a half hour, and take them out and seal the lids with our new canning tool. At this rate, we were set to finish at the stroke of midnight. But as luck would have it, the last batch didn’t go quite as planned; we were reusing jars from my host mom’s collection and after we’d prepped and processed them, we discovered that 3 of the 4 jars’ necks were millimeters to thin for our lids to seal properly. After ruining two lids, we decided to consolidate our losses in one 3-liter jar and use the last remaining lid. Fortunately, this worked—but it added almost an extra hour to the proceedings.We fell into bed a 1 a.m. too tired to care about the mouse running along the walls (he’s been eating my emergency food supplies). Hey, we’re all preparing for winter here. Eat and let eat!
