Foodanddrink

The one jar of tomatoes I still can’t bring myself to open

Food & Wine · Jul 22, 2026 17:00 · 4 min read

As my grandmother’s dementia stole her memories, our annual tomato canning ritual became a way to preserve something even more precious than the harvest.

In 2011, after six decades of canning tomatoes, my grandmother, Nancy Cooper, quietly announced that this would be the final season she would perform the annual ritual. As the ascendant cook in our family, I needed to learn from her while she still remembered.

On the way to Nana’s house for my first lesson, I selected a bushel of sturdy, red beefsteaks from Jim’s Market, just down the road from my great-grandfather’s old dairy farm in southeastern Pennsylvania, near the Maryland line. The car filled with the familiar scent of sun-warmed tomatoes and when I pulled into the driveway, I drew a deep breath as my arms settled on the steering wheel. Time to go in.

Nana had already put everything in place on the Formica kitchen countertop: the worn paring knife she used to clip lettuce; the long, broken-handled aluminum teaspoon devoted to canning salt; a new pack of candy-striped HandiWipes; and the chipped enamel dishpan that had belonged to her mother-in-law, my great-grandmother Florence.

A towering pot of water gurgled on the electric coil stovetop with a simmering saucepan on the side beneath the clay “Nana’s Kitchen” sign I’d proudly stamped and glazed in fourth grade pottery class. Nana tugged my shoulder and gave me the squeeze of reassurance she knew I needed.

I rinsed the tomatoes in the narrow double sink in front of the window that looked out onto the cow pastures and cornfields my grandfathers and uncles had once farmed, while Nana reached into a cupboard, pulling out a dog-eared, overstuffed book I’d somehow never seen before. I let the tomatoes bob in the basin and joined her at the counter. With her blue-veined hands, work-worn by years of needlework and cooking, she cracked open The Freezing & Canning Cookbook: Prize Recipes from the Farms of America.

It was thick with decades of faded Post-it notes and yellowed paper scraps from harvests long gone: “Put grapes thru Victorio strainer” (2002), “7 pints Pepper Slaw, 1 huge head of cabbage” (2006), “24 Jet Star from Jim’s, 15 Champions from Amish Market” (2007) — all written in her perfect blue-black cursive. Long before the fog of dementia crept in, Nana had been preserving pieces of her memory alongside the fleeting bounty of each season.

We stood shoulder to shoulder over the dishpan, our thumbs and paring knives in rhythm as we cored the tomatoes and slipped them from their just-scalded skins. We filled each quart jar with halved and quartered fruit, packing them tight and pressing out the juice.

Twenty-two quarts in, Nana pulled two butter knives from the kitchen drawer. “Here, let’s get these buggers out,” she said with a giggle. I followed her lead, sliding my knife along the inside edges to chase out the tiny air bubbles that could shatter the glass in the boiling water.

We nestled lids on top of the jars and tightened rings around their collars before lowering them ever-so-carefully into the kettle to seal. They rocked against the metal cage while we listened to the tick of the kitchen clock, willing each one to hold. When the buzzer sounded, Nana and I met each other’s eyes and exhaled, our faces damp with steam and sweat.

As we dried them with the HandiWipes and lined them neatly across the counter, their glass still warm to the touch, we anxiously awaited the soft, tinny pops of the lids, each one confirming the tomatoes were preserved. Every click felt like a small victory, an assurance that this ritual would remain with me long after Nana could no longer hold onto it herself.

We had a few more canning days in the years that followed, each one a little slower and more tentative than the last. Nana would confuse a step, misjudge a measurement, or strain to recall details she once knew by heart. Somewhere along the way, I began to understand that the canning had stopped being about tomatoes and became a means of holding onto Nana. I rationed the final jars we made together, opening them sparingly whenever I felt her beginning to fade. One still waits in my pantry, full of everything she entrusted to me. I cannot bring myself to pick it up and break the seal.

When someone you love begins forgetting who they are, you discover the heartbreak of dementia is not only in losing them, but watching pieces of them disappear while they are still here. You begin reaching for the things that return them to you. It’s been more than a year since this cruel disease took Nana’s life, yet I still find traces of her in the clink of the canning rings, the careful instructions in her notes, and the sweet, familiar smell of just-picked tomatoes.

I make my own recipes with those canned tomatoes, like a molasses-rich jam drawn from our Pennsylvania Dutch roots, layered between whipped cream biscuits that nod to the long line of dairy farmers in our family. I invite you to join Nana and me at our table, and make a memory of your own.