My Grandmother's Canning Kitchen

Many times when I am working in my canning kitchen I think back on my grandmother's canning kitchen.  It was called the "summer kitchen".  This room was on the back of her house, I have no idea what it was before it was turned into a kitchen or if grandpa had built it on to the house, but this room seemed to be made especially for what it was used for.  It was a bright and airy room with plenty of windows, for these were the days before central air conditioning.  This room was used in the summer so that the house would stay cool while grandma was cooking and preserving all the wonderful things coming out of the garden.

The Summer Kitchen seemed to have endless work space with counters and tables worn smooth from years of cutting, slicing and chopping.  The ever present coffee pot was always on the back of the stove, no one ever came to grandma's back door without being offered a cup of coffee and a bite of whatever was cooking at that time.  I also remember a bottomless cookie jar that held baked goodies for the children and any adult that came through.  There was a door that led downstairs to the cool dark recesses of the cellar under the house.  This is where the bounty of the summer was kept and I was always captivated by what could be found down there, row upon row of canned goods, potatoes and other "root" crops.  The dried fruits and vegetables were kept up in the attic. 

It seemed like the summer kitchen had "seasons",  every thing that went on in that kitchen was dictated by what was "in season", blackberries, strawberries, peaches, tomatoes, corn and green beans.  This room was made for work but grandma and the aunts would always find some fun to have, neighbors would stop by and help or just sit and talk, there always seemed to be children passing in and out just to see what was "on the stove".

When I moved into my house some forty years ago I felt like a canning kitchen was a little old fashioned so I used my regular kitchen to do the things that needed to be done in the summer.  My house had a large laundry room with a sink in it, I found myself using this room as an extension of my kitchen until I realized that I needed to rethink the canning kitchen.  After all, I had a large laundry room with space that wasn't used very much, only when I was doing laundry.  I guess you can say that my canning kitchen evolved.  First I moved the washer and dryer to a more convenient place in the house and replaced the sink and added a counter with plenty of work space and placed a table in the middle of the room.  I used the room like this for a while because it provided a great place to wash and prepare produce before transferring them to the "real" kitchen.  I then added a used stove.  Through the years my canning kitchen has evolved into a very pleasant work room with a dishwasher and two freezers, a chest type and an upright.  I by no means spent a lot of money "redoing" this room.  I bought used appliances (all but the freezers) and did it over a period of years, not all at once.  Now I have a room that I can truly say is one of my favorites, one that I feel my grandmother would be comfortable walking into and getting down to business.