After a large holiday meal, many cooks wonder what to do with all the leftover food. This Sitka Kitch class will teach students how to safely preserve the leftovers for later. Instructor Sarah Lewis also will teach students how to make holiday gifts, using water-bath and pressure canners.

Sarah is the home, health and family development agent for the Juneau District Office of the University of Alaska Fairbanks Cooperative Extension Service. She will teach this class by videoconference, and she will teach about 5-8 different recipes so students will be able to take half-pint jars of various products home to sample (the jars are included in the fees). This is a five-hour class.

An expert in safe home food preservation, Sarah will teach students which foods need to be canned in a pressure canner (for example, meats and some soups) and which can be canned in a water-bath canner (eg, jams and jellies).

This will be the third Sitka Kitch class in our new Sitka Lutheran Church location. We opened the series with a Cajun cooking class on Nov. 26, and the second class is Making Zarzuela (a fish stew) With Chef François Sanchez from 6-8 p.m. on Tuesday, Dec. 11. We plan to have additional classes in the Cooking Around The World series in January, February and March. Watch our website and Facebook page for more details when they become available.

The registration deadline for this class is 11:30 p.m. on Thursday, Dec. 13, so register now since space is limited. We need at least eight students to register and pre-pay to make this class happen. The class costs $40, which is part of our new all-inclusive fee system (you no longer have to pay a class fee to register, then a separate food/supply fee). You can register and pre-pay using credit/debit cards or PayPal on our EventSmart page, http://sitkakitch.eventsmart.com (click on class title). For those wanting to pre-pay with cash or check, please call Claire Sanchez or Clarice Johnson at Sitka Conservation Society (747-7509) to arrange a payment. We do offer one potential scholarship spot per class for people with limited incomes, so long as we already have enough students registered to make the class happen. Contact Jasmine Shaw of the UAF Cooperative Extension Service Sitka District Office (747-9440) or Claire at SCS for more details.

Students should enter the Sitka Lutheran Church through the back entrance (through the alley off Harbor Drive by Bev’s Flowers and Gifts). The door on the right should be open for students to enter. Please do not park in the church’s back parking lot. Please use the public parking lots off Harbor Drive.

The Sitka Kitch also has a new class cancelation policy. If you register for a class, then find out you can’t attend, please email us at sitkakitch@sitkawild.org and we may be able to help fill your slot through our waiting list. If you cancel from the class at least five days in advance (eg, by Wednesday for a Monday class), you are eligible for a partial refund of your class fee, minus $5 for processing (in this case, $35). If you need to cancel with less than five days advance notice, there is no refund.