The Midnight Canner

“…

And I’ve got one more case of Masons

So I’m not gonna let that spoil, you know

Not gonna let that spoil, the Midnight Canner

”

Okay, you either get that, or you don’t. You have to grok the Allman Brothers Band.

Yes, we were canning at midnight earlier this week. It started simply enough with a defrosted bag of homemade Italian sausage. I needed to do something with it, so I put it in a soup pot with a can of San Marzano tomatoes and some chicken broth, thinking that I’d add some peppers and onions from the freezer and cook it down for Dave’s lunches. But from there it became a “stone soup” project and took on the look and feel of minestrone. Some garbanzos, some green beans I’d blanched and frozen, assorted other vegetables, leftover onion soup. Then some farfalle. By this time I had over a gallon of something that tasted really good, no place in the fridge or freezer to keep it, and a ball game to go to. Dave and I agreed to keep it simmering on the stove and just pressure can it when we got home. And that is what we did.

That is how after midnight I was monitoring the pressure on a pot of five quarts of minestrone soup. And started channeling the Allman Brothers Band.