June 28, 2008

Canning Foods at Home

Canning is an important, safe method of food preservation if practiced properly. The canning process involves placing foods in jars or cans and heating them to a temperature that destroys microorganisms that could be a health hazard or cause the food to spoil. Canning also inactivates enzymes that could cause the food to spoil. Air is driven from the jar or can during heating and as it cools a vacuum seal is formed. This vacuum seal prevents air from getting back into the product bringing with it microorganisms to re-contaminate the food.

Canning Basics

There are two safe ways of canning, depending on the type of food being canned. These are the boiling water bath method and the pressure canner method. The boiling water bath method is safe for fruits, tomatoes and pickles as well as jams, jellies and other preserves. In this method, jars of food are heated completely covered with boiling water (212 F at sea level).

Pressure canning is the only safe method of canning vegetables, meats, poultry and seafood. Jars of food are placed in 2 to 3 inches of water in a pressure canner which is heated to a temperature of at least 240 F. This temperature can only be reached in a pressure canner.

Checking and Testing Your Pressure Canners

Your home pressure canner should be checked and tested annually to ensure its proper working condition. University of Illinois Extension provides this service free of charge in participating counties. Contact your local Extension Office to find out where pressure canners may be tested in your area.

Posted by Ron Wolford at 9:06 PM | Permalink |

June 24, 2008

MarketMaker Website Helps Buyers in Search of Safe Tomatoes

A recent national Salmonella outbreak in some tomato varieties has sent grocery stores, restaurants and tomato product producers scrambling to find sources. One place they've been able to connect with tomato growers is through the MarketMaker website.

"The local tomato farmers listed on the MarketMaker website are source-verified, so consumers know where the tomatoes came from and how they were grown," said Dar Knipe, University of Illinois Extension marketing specialist.

Sandy Shetler is the website manager for MarketMaker. "I received a call from a vegetable farmer in Lancaster, Ohio who is one of the tomato producers listed on MarketMaker. He had been contacted by someone who needed uncontaminated tomatoes. His tomatoes were just turning green so he referred them to a producer in southern Illinois whose crop was a few weeks ahead of his.

"Kentucky, Georgia and Mississippi are farther south and may have tomatoes ready to sell and they all have live websites with searchable databases of producers," said Shetler. "This is a prime example of when something like the Salmonella outbreak happens, people can visit the website to find local, source-verified food."

The website began as an online database of Illinois businesses but has expanded to include 10 states whose websites are up and running: Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, Michigan, Nebraska, New York, Kentucky, Ohio, Mississippi, and Georgia. Colorado, Washington D.C. and South Carolina have websites that are under construction.

Knipe said that they partner with Land Grant Universities because they have Extension personnel. "We train the Extension educators how to enroll new entries, then they go out to the farmers and other producers and teach them how to get their business listed on the MarketMaker website and how to update their information," she said.

There is no charge associated with having a business listed on the site.

Individuals can use the MarketMaker website to search for restaurants or places to buy things like maple syrup, wine and produce direct and producers can search for farmers' markets, grocery stores and other outlets to sell their food products.

The national website is located at http://national.marketmaker.uiuc.edu/. Participating states are highlighted, making it easy for users to navigate from state to state and get data from a combination of states or from just one area.

For more information about MarketMaker, contact any member of the development team: Darlene Knipe (dknipe@uiuc.edu; 309-792-2500), Gina Backes (backes@uiuc.edu; 309-796-0512), Pat Curry (curry@uiuc.edu; 217-782-6515) or Peter Goldsmith (pgoldsmi@uiuc.edu; 217-333-5131).

MarketMaker is a collaboration between the University of Illinois Initiative for the Development of Entrepreneurship in Agriculture (IDEA), the Illinois Department of Agriculture and C-FAR (Illinois Council on Food and Agricultural Research). The project was funded by the Illinois Department of Agriculture, University of Illinois Extension, and the Illinois Council on Food and Agricultural Research (C-FAR).

Source: Darlene Knipe, Extension Specialist, Marketing and Business Development, dknipe@uiuc.edu

Posted by Ron Wolford at 7:57 PM | Permalink |