Well Preserved

Canningshed’s director of preservation brings summer to your winter plate.

- Lydia Woolever

On a brisk October morning, Lauren Sandler hustles across an empty parking lot in the far corners of Woodberry. On this small tract of land, wedged between overgrown railroad tracks and steady traffic on the Jones Falls Expressway, she makes her way inside a cinderblock building, moving through the vacant space toward a hulking freight elevator, which she slides open and heaves shut before pressing a red button. The lift lurches then lands in the depths of the cool earth, where a dank hallway leads to a dimly lit bunker, filled with sky-high stacks of Snake Oil hot sauce, towering boxes of jarred tomatoes, and teetering pallets of strawberry jam.

This subterranean cache belongs to Canningshed—the preservation program of James Beard Award-winning chef Spike Gjerde—and, as winter looms, it will transform into a clandestine war chest, fortified to supply Gjerde’s growing brood of Baltimore restaurants with the bright flavors of warm-weather produce through the long, cold days ahead.

“I made 94,000 more jars this year,” says Sandler, looking around her well-stocked warehouse with a worried smile. “So we’ll have to find space for those in here somehow, too.”

As Canningshed’s director of preservation, Sandler, 32, has made all of this almost singlehandedly—the 1,000 jars of jam, the 5,000 bottles of hot sauce, the countless quantities of preserved herbs and spices, ranging from the vibrant dried greens of lemon thyme and garlic chives to the resplendent rosy powders of blush-pink rhubarb and brick-red poblanos.