Being possessed of a salty-spicy palate more than a sweet one, I’d gladly
take salsa over ketchup any day and often sub it in on burgers, with
homefries, and on scrambled eggs.

Here are a few more suggestions for spicing up your life with leftover
salsa:

1. Add it to slow cooker chicken: Dump that jar into the cooker with
whatever cuts of raw chicken you have on hand, and enjoy with rice or
tortilla chips eight hours later! Or add a Thai-inspired twist with a few
spoonfuls of peanut butter, a can of black beans, and some coriander seeds
added to the cooker along with the salsa and chicken. Serve with fresh
cilantro sprigs, green onions, and lime wedges. YUM!

2. Add to chili: Thought the red peppers in the crisper were still ok,
but then got a squishy surprise? Skip ‘em and just add leftover salsa to
the chili pot: it contains plenty of peppers, along with onions and garlic,
which means a whole lot less chopping for you!

3. Make “dirty rice”: Another Mexican delight! Just add a few
spoonsful of salsa to white rice as it’s cooking; amazing with refried
beans.

4. Add to meatloaf: Stir it right in, along with bread crumbs, onions,
eggs, and meat. Or spread it over the top of the loaf before baking for a
nice glaze.

5. Make soup: My favourite Mexican restaurant makes an unforgettable
chicken soup that’s as piquant as it is nourishing—after eating many bowls
of it there over the years, I hope I’ve mostly figured out the recipe!
(Thank you, Mex of Ellsworth, Maine! You are the BEST!) Here it is…

Mexican Chicken Soup

4-5 cups soup stock (I like beef best, but chicken or veggie stock would
also work)
1 large chopped onion
2-3 garlic cloves, minced
1 cup salsa (or whatever’s left in the jar)
1 can chopped green chilies
1 can whole stewed tomatoes (or use 3-4 fresh or frozen ones from your
garden!)
1-2 cups diced cooked chicken
2 teaspoons salt
Juice of 2 limes
cilantro for garnish

Add all ingredients except cilantro and lime juice to a large soup pot and
bring to a boil. Serve piping hot with a few splashes of lime and cilantro
stems in each bowl. Great with corn chips!

Bon appétit (buen provencho!)

Here are some suggestions:

1. *Add chopped pickles to burger meat:* Many gourmet butchers now
regularly add chopped pickles, relish and/or pickled peppers to their
burger patties…and you can too! The built-in flavour is delightful and
eliminates the need for extra condiments. Try a dill pickle-jalapeno pepper
mix for a combo of sour and spicy that is just right on the grill! Or try
pickled beet-burgers for their bright colour and sweetness. If you’re
impatient with fine chopping, just toss everything into the food processor.

2. *Make rouladen*: The Germans were really onto something when they
decided to roll up a whole dill pickle in a wide strip of thinly-sliced
beef before popping it on the grill: a smear of horseradish or mustard on
the beef doesn’t go amiss, either! Add a strip of bacon to the outside for
extra decadence, and secure your roulade with a toothpick so it doesn’t
come unravelled! Dilled green beans or carrot spears can be subbed in for
dill pickles.

3. *Make kabobs*: Skewer alternating chunks of dill pickle with fresh
tomatoes, mushrooms, chunks of pepper, and meat of your choice for a fresh
twist on a kabob.

4. *Make pickle dip*: Grab your electric mixer and blend together a
cup of sour cream with a block of cream cheese, salt, pepper, a bit of
chopped onion, and a few finely chopped dill pickles (you could also use
dill relish). Fresh dill adds colour and extra flavour to your dip.

5. *When the pickles are gone, don’t pour out the pickle juice!* Some
drink it right from the jar; others pour it into a Bloody Mary. You can
also use it as the basis for a tangy salad dressing. I like to use my
pickle juice to make German potato salad, the no-mayo version of a picnic
classic. Here’s a favourite recipe from my forthcoming book, *Grow Hope: A
Simple Guide to Creating Your Own Food Garden at Home. *You can find more
recipes there, as well as encouragement for starting your own food garden
(or improving your existing one!)

German Potato Salad

• 5-6 potatoes, cubed (don’t bother
  with peeling)
• 4 slices of bacon
• 1 onion, chopped
• 1/3 cup pickle juice, or apple
• cider vinegar
• 2 tablespoons white sugar
• 2 teaspoons mustard seed, or Dijon
• mustard
• ¼ teaspoon ground pepper
• 1 tablespoon fresh dill, parsley, cilantro, chives, or a combination!

In a large pot, add cubed potatoes and cover with water; bring to a boil.
Meanwhile, slice bacon into small pieces and fry in a large pan until brown
and crispy. Remove bacon bits from the pan but keep the hot fat. Add
chopped onion and fry until translucent. Add vinegar, sugar, mustard seed,
and pepper. Once potatoes are soft, drain and add them to the frying pan.
Stir until potatoes are well-coated with dressing. Add chopped fresh herbs
and serve warm or cold.

Let’s start with jam!

I am guilty of opening several flavours of jam at once because MOODS… This
means an unruly crowd of Mason jars perpetually inhabiting the fridge
shelves. I should add they’re of a recent enough vintage not to be
moldy—check yours, too, to make sure, and always make a practice of adding
date labels whenever you make homemade preserves.

Here are some ideas for using up jam:

1. Pancake syrup: Mix whatever’s in the jar with some water, apple or
orange juice and warm it up on the stove. Some favourite combinations:
blueberry jam/lemon juice, strawberry-rhubarb/orange juice,
blackberry/apple juice or cider. Save money on maple syrup this winter!

2. Trifle: a super easy but impressive English dessert. You’ll need a
white cake cut into chunks, custard (OK to use vanilla instant Jello—I
won’t tell!), and jam. Layer them in a glass baking dish and serve!

3. Vinaigrette: Some of those fruity jam flavours make a superb salad
dressing: think raspberry, peach, or my favorite, blueberry! Just add jam,
olive oil, and vinegar (red wine or light balsamic are good choices) to
your blender with some fresh garlic, a bit of salt, and some herbs et
voilà!

4. Thumbprint cookies: You remember them…they’re that cute shortbread
where you push your thumb into the centre to make a well for jelly or jam.
Raspberry is a favourite centre, or try strawberry, or red or black
currant. Here’s a great recipe!

https://www.delish.com/cooking/recipe-ideas/recipes/a56358/easy-jam-thumbprint-cookies/

How do you like to use up your homemade jams and jellies?

Also known as sunchokes, Jerusalem artichokes are hardy native Canadian perennials that can quickly get established in your garden patch. They are giants, growing sometimes 3 metres in height, topped by a cheerful yellow sunflower-like blossom. It’s the base of the plant, though, that contains the potato-like tuber renowned by indigenous folks in Canada well before the arrival of Europeans—the newcomers called them “Canada Potatoes”. Like potatoes, JA’s can be eaten boiled, baked, fried, in soups or stews or raw in salads.  

The University of Saskatchewan’s College of Agriculture and Bioresources webpage informs us of a somewhat unique feature of the Jerusalem artichoke, which makes it a good dietary choice for those with diabetes: “Moderate amounts of Jerusalem artichokes can be consumed without any serious increase in blood glucose levels [unlike potatoes]. The tubers contain no starch. On the contrary, carbohydrates are stored as inulin.  In the digestive tract, inulin cannot be digested by humans. This inability to be digested leads to the major disadvantage of eating Jerusalem artichokes; flatulence.” This is doubtless where the plant got its unfortunate nickname, “Jerusalem Fartichoke”! Oh well, nobody’s perfect!

In spite of this drawback, devotees of the JA prize it for its flavour and ease of growing—the plant is well-adapted to the Canadian climate and has no major insect predators. Just like garlic and spring bulbs, you can plant JA’s in the fall or early in the spring, once the danger of frost is over. Harvest them around Thanksgiving or later, and store them in a cold room or in your fridge crisper in a paper bag. Don’t wash them before storing, or you’ll nick the delicate flesh, hastening spoilage.

I don’t bother peeling these knobby customers—just like potatoes, you can boil or bake with the skins on. 

A trick for removing the gas from JA’s before consuming: boil slices of the tuber in lemon juice, which converts the inulin to a more digestible sugar. When it’s soft, you can put it in a blender with garlic, olive oil and some nutritional yeast flakes for a healthy, homegrown chip dip. 

Happy growing—and munching! 

The single-digit nighttime temperatures combined with an active hurricane season have sent East Coast gardeners into a predictable panic. Their Instagram accounts are overflowing with pictures of turkey roasters filled with underripe tomatoes, plucked ahead of Hurricane Teddy. In a year when COVID has turned gardening into therapy, it’s not surprising that Mason jars have become as scarce a commodity as toilet paper was in April. Preserving what we’ve grown is just as therapeutic as growing our food from scratch.

If you’re new to gardening, and are wondering what comes next, I offer you a checklist of tasks for the fall season that should keep you occupied well into October.

• What to keep/what to pull out: Not all veggies like the same weather conditions. Carrots, parsnips, kale, Brussels sprouts, and peas sowed in mid-summer are all enjoying our cooler fall weather and should be given more time in the garden. Carrots and parsnips even get sweeter after a frost; we don’t usually harvest them until Thanksgiving.  As for the sun lovers—tomatoes, peppers, squash and eggplants—they are likely already shivering and ready to get out of the pool!

• Green manure: You likely have some garden space left vacant from the departure of your tomatoes and their friends. Why not cover crop it with plants that will add nourishment to the soil? Buckwheat, clover, winter rye and oats are good choices; they’ll grow for a few weeks in fall, then, after the frosts fell them, will add nutrients back into your soil.

• Fall means GARLIC! One of the easiest and most satisfying crops to grow is garlic. You can find it at garden centres at this time of year right next to fall bulbs like tulips and daffodils, or pick some up at the farmers’ market. Break the head into cloves, and plant each clove in well-prepared soil around Thanksgiving time. I usually add liberal helpings of kelp meal, bone meal, blood meal and well-composted manure to my garlic beds, as they’ll be spending three-quarters of a year in there and will need enough provisions to grow big and healthy. Make sure to stick them in bum-side down, with their pointy tops just below the surface of the soil. I cover my garlics in eelgrass, dead leaves, or straw weighted down with earth to keep it from blowing away. 

• Collect seed: Harvest time is perfect for collecting seed. There are always a few beans and peas with brown rattly pods still left on the vines, or a kale or mustard plant that’s making teeny pods of its own, each filled with dozens of tiny black seeds. Get busy and collect that bounty for next year and save money at the garden centre while you’re at it! This year, I plan to tuck seeds into small envelopes to include with Christmas greetings—if current trends continue, we may be seeing more shortages of seeds next spring. 

• Update your journal: If you don’t have a garden journal, now’s a good time to fix that! You likely have a few successes and failures to jot down while they’re still fresh in your mind. Perhaps a certain variety of tomato did exceptionally well for you, and you want to remember its name for next year. A journal can be extremely simple and point form-ish; I’ve kept one on and off for 25 years. It makes fantastic reading during the long winter months when we can’t get into the garden.

Wishing you and your garden much happiness and productivity as we pass into a new season.

A heartening discovery I’ve made this spring, though, is that even with so many limitations placed on our lives and regular activities during the pandemic, we always seem to be able to find new things to do. 

It’s a phenomenon noted in areas of human activity known for their creativity, such as cooking and the fine arts: restrictions breed creativity.

In his inspiring TEDtalk, “Embrace the Shake,” artist Phil Hanson tells the story of how he developed a tremor in his dominant hand that stopped him from doing the fine pointillist drawings he loved. As a result of this devastating limitation, Hanson found bold new ways to create art in ways that didn’t involve tightly gripping a pencil, such as the portrait of Bruce Lee he created using karate chops made by dipping the side of his hand in paint and revitalizing his artistic career.

Michelin chefs, too, are well known for restricting the number of ingredients they allow themselves to us in the process of creating amazing new dishes. 

It’s almost as if we modern humans have so many options that our brains get swamped with the sheer number of possibilities and our creative spark goes out.

We all know the expression, “Necessity is the mother of invention.” Restrictions and obstacles, whether we choose them or whether they are chosen for us, can be applied to our creative thinking (and acting) in the garden as well.

In cleaning up my herb and vegetable beds at the end of March, I noticed how much my perennial lemon balm had spread—it has a lovely scent and makes a calming tea, but it’s highly invasive and I don’t have enough space for it to roam. I needed to dig it out, but didn’t want to throw away large amounts of the sweet-smelling, hardy herb which many people buy at garden centres. 

Using recycled plant pots, I carefully removed seven clumps of it and potted them. For fun, I made cards addressed in the voice of the lemon balm that began with the salutation, “HI! I’m a lemon balm love bomb!” Whenever I hear of a local friend or acquaintance who is having a rough time and might like a green friend in a pot who makes a fine cup of tea, I leave a plant and card on their doorstep. The delivery outing (done on foot or by bike) is part of my family’s daily exercise and solves several problems at once—most notably, answering the question, “What are we doing now?” with “Delivering a hug from the garden!”

What are some resource limitations that might come into play as we consider our gardening options this season?

1. Limited space: Maybe you have a small yard, a shaded yard, or no yard at all. 
2. Limited time: Maybe you are working from home, homeschooling kids, or helping elders and neighbours during COVID and are busier than ever. 
3. Limited funds: Maybe you are facing financial losses as a result of the shutdown and have limited funds available for garden projects. 

Let’s consider these limitations in order. 

1. Space: For those with limited space, container gardening may be a natural fit. Most vegetables and herbs can be grown in containers. If you live in an apartment with a balcony, containers can be a good solution—you can even bring vulnerable plants inside on cold nights. If containers aren’t your thing, consider sharing yard space with a non-gardening neighbour or friend. Yard-sharing is a popular practice in many large cities and can be a great way to connect with community and share the fruits of the harvest at the end of the growing season. Or you can look into renting space in a community garden nearby—most are low cost and provide you with soil and on-site water. Most provinces are allowing community gardening to continue during the shutdown, recognizing it as the essential service that it surely is.

2. Time:  You can consider time spent in the garden as both a form of exercise and as a homeschooling opportunity for kids, if you have them; it lends itself to a variety of school subjects from biology, insect life, nutrition, and food history (think Victory Gardens!) as well as skill-building. When we are asked to “stay the blazes home” for an indefinite period of time, gardening can make the time pass more quickly. The steady changes we can observe in the garden over a growing season when we will likely not be taking vacation keeps us grounded in the present, and hopeful for the future. 

3. Money: There are many ways to save money when growing our own food, from saving seeds from year to year, to sharing a seed order with a friend, participating in a seed swap (usually done in person, but check Facebook for an online version in your area), to asking gardening acquaintances for cuttings from their fruit bushes, or dividing herbs like chives, perennial onion, and mints that you can transplant rather than buying them at a garden centre. Do you have sprouting potatoes in a paper bag in your basement or in your fridge? Plant them! If you had a veggie garden last year, did you have extra peas and beans that you forgot to pick and the pods went brown and rattly? Those legumes can be planted this year. Ditto kale, mizunas, cilantro, tomatoes in a mild winter, and the list goes on… Look for signs of self-seeded “volunteer” veggies and herbs in the garden before you start digging around. Learn about edible weeds and their nutritional value: I never root out lambs’ quarters or dandelions because their young leaves are so delicious! YouTube videos on the topic abound: check them out on rainy days when you can’t get in the garden. Remember, too, that you will soon be saving money on fresh veggies when your garden begins to produce—this is the whole point of the exercise for many!

It’s useful to consider the current limitations in our lives as a chance to strengthen our creative, lateral thinking. This habit of mind is likely how our ancestors survived during tough times and how our brains evolved. We, their descendants, need all the resourcefulness we can possibly muster during our own challenging times—which thankfully don’t currently include being attacked by sabre-toothed cats, or an ice age spreading across the landscape!

Our gardens are the schools and workplaces that have remained open in 2020, and they will continue to inspire us to find creative solutions to our problems.

In the meantime, here is another small sample from the book, short enough, I hope, that it will not bring on any symptoms!

What we see when we slow down

Since I was too dizzy to drive or ride my bicycle in the weeks after my concussion, I began walking. Just around my own neighbourhood at first—even small trips to the drugstore or post office seemed like epic outings when my brain was crowded with symptoms.

You see a whole lot more when you’re walking than via any other mode of transportation. It invites you to experience your five senses in ways not usually available in our regular lives.

On my walks, I noticed how the lavender plant in my neighbour’s front garden bloomed beautifully all summer long. With her permission, I would stop and pluck a couple of strands from its large bushy cushion and rub them between my fingers every time I passed by. The scent on my fingers was like medicine for my nerves (I learned later that lavender oil is used as a sleep aid and general calming agent).

Returning from walks, and not wanting to go back inside just yet, I would visit the garden, a sanctuary of calm which provided me with many delightful flavours to collect by hand all summer long, especially berries. From early July sweet strawberries, to the deeper red, scratchier raspberries that seeded themselves among the currant bushes, to a few highbush blueberries the birds didn’t eat, to the black currants, deepest purple and most adult berry of them all. I spent the most time picking these tiny dark globes from their large, treelike bushes, and turning them into jelly, one of the tart, musky and concentrated delights of midsummer.

The slow, unhurried action of berry picking gave my brain a simple and undemanding task that became a pleasure in its productive repetition: the same hand motion, finger grasping berry, container slowly filling with fruit. Just enough stimulation of the visual centre not to overwhelm, but satisfy.

It was astonishing to me how pleasurable such small manual tasks became in my shrunk-down, post-concussion world.

What are some of your own small but healing pleasures?

I’ve learned that our brains hold on to significant dates—some benign, like birthdays, and some painful, like the date we lost a loved one or were seriously injured. As we approach the anniversary of our injury or loss, we may feel a strong sense of dread and vulnerability or experience painful flashbacks to the event. It is a date most of us would like to forget.

Some years ago, I decided that, instead of suffering through each successive return of what I called my “accidentaversary” on May 2^nd, I would use that day to celebrate some joyful aspect of being alive. One year, I had professional photos taken of me in natural surroundings to affirm my continued presence in, and love for, the world. Another year, I treated myself to a massage; on last year’s accidentaversary, I committed to writing a book about what it’s like to heal from a concussion. That book is now complete and about to be published.

As much as possible, I try to honour this date as one of spiritual reflection and renewal and not schedule too much work then. For me, it has been a healing ritual to mark each return of the date with gratitude rather than dread.

On this May 2^nd, I completed a four-day course on neurorehabilitation after brain injury offered through Brock University and the Brain Injury Association of Nova Scotia, who generously funded my attendance. I met many others, like me, who had to rebuild their lives and identities following their injury. I loved being a student again – after twenty years of being a teacher, it’s nice to let others do the PowerPointing! – and learned a great deal about the brain and its incredible capacity to heal. What better way to celebrate my brain’s return to health in a wonderful community of others who know that journey well?

If you have a date that brings you dread, consider changing it into a day of reflection, one that holds meaning and comfort for your hurting self.

How will you transform your own accidentaversary?

Especially renowned in New Brunswick, along the banks of the Saint John river, but actually found throughout the Maritimes and New England, these bright green gems like to hide themselves in wet and wild places, making them a forager’s delightful surprise discovery. Once discovered, like their springtime companion, the mayflower, foragers keep tight-lipped about their whereabouts. “Where’s your patch?” is a question you should never ask if you are a dinner guest at a forager’s house and happen to find fiddleheads nestled on your plate.

Fiddleheads are pretty primal-looking critters: like embryonic dragons emerging from small, brown volcanoes, with a papery brown placental husk covering them. Plucking this husk from them takes time, and must be done by hand, making fiddleheads a true labour-intensive delicacy. They should be cooked or steamed for at least 10 minutes—though I’ve occasionally popped a raw one into my mouth (oops! They’re so tempting!) it’s better to err on the side of caution rather than wind up with a case of food poisoning that has been linked to raw or undercooked fiddlehead eating.

Fiddleheads have been a part of my family for years. My grandfather, a passionate lover of the natural world, must have encountered many patches of them on his hikes through the Nova Scotia woods. On one expedition, he was distressed to discover that the woods he had visited in the recent past had been clear-cut: he found a forlorn patch of fiddleheads exposed to the sun, and decided to relocate them to his own woodsy backyard, where they thrived and multiplied—the uneaten ones transformed to a Paleozoic-era fern forest that I enjoyed getting lost in as a child—the soft fronds of the full-fledged ostrich ferns brushing my bare arms and tickling my ears as I passed through, imagining I was a small, intrepid dinosaur living millions of years ago.

You don’t need to be a forager to enjoy the seasonal delight of fiddleheads: they appear pretty consistently at farmers’ markets in the region at this time of year.

Besides eating them steamed with butter, pepper and salt—or spritzed with cider vinegar—I have canned fiddleheads, (admittedly, they lose almost all of their appealing bright green colour this way), frozen them, and made a pretty delicious soup out of them. Because the taste of fiddleheads is kind of a cross between broccoli and asparagus, they lend themselves well to a cream-based soup, which can be made with or without dairy. Even suspicious children will take to this fiddlehead format!

However you eat them, I wish you the happiest of fiddlehead seasons!

Cream of fiddlehead soup

1 large onion, chopped and sautéed in butter or olive oil

5 cups stock, veggie or chicken-based

2-3 large potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks

2 teaspoons salt

½ teaspoon ground black pepper

2 cups fiddleheads

1 can coconut milk, or about 1 ½ cups homogenized milk or blend, or cream

Saute onion in a small amount of butter or olive oil, adding salt and pepper as it cooks. In a large saucepan or soup pot, heat stock to a simmer over medium heat and add potatoes and fiddleheads to cook (this saves using another pot!), along with cooked onion. After about 15-20 minutes, or whenever the veggies are tender, remove saucepan from the heat, and add coconut or plain milk. Puree the soup with an immersion blender until smooth and creamy. Serve with a generous dollop of butter.

I’m going to spend the next couple of weeks singing the praises of each member of this marvellous trio in turn, mainly in the form of favourite recipes. I’ll start with the ‘barb since it’s the only one that’s visible in my garden right now.

Rhubarb is a funny bird: it’s rare to eat just the stalk of something and discard the leaves (we do this with sugar cane, too). It’s tart enough to make you pucker: I cringed when my two-year-old pulled a stalk out of the ground one spring, broke it in half, and started munching on it. He was amazingly unfazed—this kid sucks on lemon wedges for fun. “Woo-bahb,” he pronounced with satisfaction between bites.

Like citrus, rhubarb is high in vitamin C; it’s also moderately high in potassium. It’s been consumed for medicinal (mostly laxative) purposes in China and parts of Asia for thousands of years.

The rhubarb plant’s a heavy feeder—it loves hanging out near manure piles and around compost heaps. The leaves from these plants are the size of elephant ears.

On a bike ride along the old railbed near our cottage a few years ago, we discovered a lush patch of enormous rhubarb growing on the grounds of an old farmstead; I stuffed the giant stalks into my backpack and into the back of the bike trailer for the freezer, wondering somewhat suspiciously what caused the massive growth: an old septic field? Compost pile? Hopefully not a cemetery….

If you’re on a rhubarb watch on your own property right now, I send you these favourite recipes to try when the time comes:

Rhubarb Meringue Pie

This recipe shared space on a page in my grandmother’s recipe book with another rhubarb pie that called for a crumb topping. Both are excellent and custardy, but I like this one a little bit more… if you have a few frozen strawberries lingering in your freezer, you could add them to the rhubarb to make up the three cups of fruit the recipe calls for.

3 cups chopped rhubarb

1 cup white sugar

3 tablespoons white flour

2 tablespoons butter

2 egg yolks

1 unbaked pie crust

Meringue topping:

2 egg whites

¼ teaspoon cream of tartar

¼ cup sugar

2 tablespoons water

½ teaspoon vanilla

¼ teaspoon salt

In a large bowl, combine rhubarb. Sugar, flour, and butter. In a separate bowl, beat egg yolks and stir into rhubarb mixture. Add to pie shell and bake in 425 degree F oven for 10 minutes. Reduce heat to 350 deg F and bake 30 minutes more. Remove from oven and cool to lukewarm.

In another large bowl, beat egg whites with cream of tartar until stiff (3-5 minutes). Gradually beat in sugar. Add water, vanilla and salt. Beat until very stiff, shiny peaks form. Spread meringue over pie, making sure it touches pastry edges. Bake 10-12 minutes in a 375 degree oven. (You’ll be adjusting your oven dial a fair bit for this recipe!)

Orange-Rhubarb Butter: from Marisa McClellan’s canning Bible, Food In Jars.

Marisa McClellan is the queen of all things jammed, jellied, relished, and otherwise canned. She’s written a few canning cookbooks now, and her recipes never disappoint. I love the tart and refreshing notes in this marriage of flavours; superb on toast, you can also use this butter as a marinade for poultry.

8 cups chopped rhubarb

2 cups granulated sugar

2 cups orange juice

Combine all ingredients in a large, heavy-bottomed saucepan and bring to a simmer. Turn down the heat to low and let it keep cooking, stirring every 5 minutes or so. Keep this up for an hour, until the butter has thickened.

While it’s cooking, prepare a boiling water bath with 2 1-pint (500 mL) jars. Put a rack in the saucepan and put jars on top. Cover them with water and bring to a boil. Put your canning lids in a smaller saucepan, cover with water, and bring them to a low boil. (If you have a magnetic wand handy, that’s the easiest way to get them out of the hot water).

When your butter has finished cooking, remove jars from canning pot (pour the water back into the pot as you remove them) and ladle hot butter into them, allowing at least ½ inch headroom. Wipe the rims, apply lids and screwbands, and process in the boiling water bath for 15 minutes.