Sauder Village - PRESERVING

 

Sauder Village - PRESERVING

A month ago - I tagged along with my sister & her family - we went to a wonderful historical village (museum) in Archbold Ohio called: SAUDER VILLAGE (click to view website)

I promise - this is the last "Sauder Village" post - I won't bore you anymore.  But I had to talk a little bit about "preserving" - and the fact that it really hasn't changed all that much.  About the only new way to preserve food since early America is the freezer and the "Food Saver" vacuum packer machine.  Other than that it is all basically the same.

Drying food - yes, today you can buy an electric dehydrator but many people will still just hang a bunch of herbs to dry in a barn for winter usage (see pictures above).  

I was fascinated by the way that the Indians used gourds for mixing & for storage.  In the picture above they dried corn kernels and made cornmeal (or corn flour) for making Bannock (a flat bread). 

Home canning hasn't changed all that much either.  Originally there was "crock" pickling in a large earthenware container.  Then there were glass canning jars sealed either with wax or with a glass lid & inner ring.  Now our canning jars are still glass but the lids and rings are metal.

This (see picture below) is NOT what you want your canning to look like - see the fuzzy white mold growing inside these jars!!  Yikes!!  I'm not sure why Sauder Village kept these jars but I had to take a picture.

Finally, the workers at Sauder Village were picking "ground cherries" - this intrigued me because I had never heard of them before.  They look like Chinese Lanterns (see picture below - those are my nieces hands) - you remove the papery film and inside is a yellow fruit that does taste like a mild cherry.  They said that if they had a good crop they would be making "Ground Cherry Pie."

ENJOY!

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