Peter Piper picked a peck of pickles,
A peck of pickles Peter Piper picked.
If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickles,
Where’s the peck of pickles Peter Piper picked?

Perhaps Peter Piper left them in The Cauldron. At least this is where Jo-Ann Laverty taught her class of Bread ‘n Butter Pickles and raspberry jam. With full participation, students ate their charcuterie snack and started the first step of canning: sanitizing.

With the produce all sourced from Rideau Pines Farm, the students start processing the cucumbers, garlic, ginger and onions. Mixing everything in large pans, they threw them into boiling pots of brine to cook and it started filling the Cauldron with a wonderful scent and making everyone’s mouth water.

Cauldron Food School snacks, always delicious.

Filling the jars.

Cooking the cukes, converting them into pickles.

To stir the Cauldron, is to know the comfort of steam.

The instructor, Jo-Ann Laverty, a force in the kitchen and in food business.

The brine mix, this boils and cooks the cukes that magically turn them into pickles.

A little elbow grease to mix the produce.

The produce mix.

Chop chop everyone. Prepping the cukes into pickles.

All the right produce from Rideau Pines Farm

Dave Neil introducing the class and giving the Cauldron Food School talk.

Charcuterie board by Dave Neil provided by The Piggy Market where you can buy these wonderful meats.

Finished product, Bread n Butter pickles.

Filling the jars.

Scooping out the pickles.

Jars to fill and to take home.

While the pots boiled, students moved on to the raspberry jam processing. A simple recipe of raspberries, sugar, salt, orange juice, and with the zest of orange proved to be a favourite. Students prepped quickly and set the pots to boil. Once cooked, the jars were filled, sealed, and cooled.

Weighing out the portions.

Please do not lick the your screen.

Students and raspberries

Rideau Pines Farm raspberries. So yummy.

More zest, more flavour.

Raspberry jam cooking.

Lemon zest, essential for the jam.

Three stages of the process.

Pouring the jam into jars, or jamming jars.

Jo-Ann Laverty, a Cauldron Food School instructor extrodinaire.

Finish product cooling.

3rd last step of jam making.

The finished products, what students were taking home. Enjoy!

Jo-Ann Laverty, instructing at The Cauldron Food School.

The Cauldron Food School offers other canning workshops and culinary arts classes. Please visit our Cauldron Events page for more info on what we offer.

Special thanks to M.V. of White Mosaic Photography for the photos in this blog post.