Canning Intensive: Preserving Autumn

Class participants will receive 4 hours of hands-on canning instruction, recipes, full jars of in-class batches, and a boost of serious canning confidence. Snacks will be served.

Cooler weather and shorter days call for the slow and steady simmer of late harvest fruit with warm spices and darker liqueurs. Delicate, fragrant pears, nutty and deeply-colored squash, and crisp persimmons all signal that there's still a good amount of work to be done for the home canner. It's one last hurrah before the frost hits, a push for your perfect pantry, and a jumpstart to your DIY holiday gifts!

Fall into fall with our canning intensive course featuring local, late autumn produce. Bi-Rite's Canner in Residence Shakirah Simley will tackle all the tricks to thicker fruit butter, seasonal seasonings, and deliciously boozy fruits. We will cover an introduction to canning theory, safety and preserving basics, and you will learn Shakirah's canning secrets for autumnal preserves, including:

Plum Butter
Pommes Poached in Spiced Wine Syrup
Fuyu Persimmon and Medjool Date Chutney
Crisp Pickled Pumpkin

(Recipes are dependent on ingredient availability.)

Shakirah Simley is the Community Programs Manager & Canner-In-Residence, Bi-Rite Family of Businesses, where she wears a number of hats including: developing jams and preserves for its PUBLIC Label line, cooking instructor at 18 Reasons (its educational arm) and community coordinator in charge of giving and community outreach, with a penchant for programs that support youth empowerment and increase access to healthy food. She is also a a Certified Master Food Preserver, UC San Mateo & San Francisco County Extension. Before arriving on 18th Street, Shakirah attended the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Italy on a Fulbright scholarship, where she received her Masters degree and studied under Italian canners. She has previously worked on nutrition and recreational equity policy issues, on youth organizing campaigns, and owned her own small-artisanal jam business, Slow Jams. She was recently named one of Zagat's "30 under 30: SF Bay Area Up and Comers." Shakirah loves putting her food systems, community engagement and jammy talents to work every day, and if you catch her on 18th street, she loves to talk food justice, policy, jamming, school food and the perfect cappuccino. You can tweet her at @EatSlowJams