Blue ribbon specialist: Iowa City doctor seals Iowa State Fair canning competitions

IOWA CITY - Like a father showing off pictures of his children, Dr. Rod Zeitler scrolls through photos on his smartphone to find choice snaps of his home-canned produce.

'Those are my tomatoes,” he says, handing over the phone to show smooth, red orbs packed into a pint jar.

Zeitler, an internist at Mercy Towncrest Internal Medicine in Iowa City, spends his days caring for geriatric patients. But his evenings and weekends - especially during the summer - are devoted to canning, pickling and making jellies, jams, relishes and salsas to enter in the Iowa State Fair, which starts next Thursday.

All that work - Zeitler spends about 500 hours annually canning - paid off last year with more than 80 blue ribbons at the state fair. This year, he plans to enter more than 200 food contests, including 187 canned goods categories for everything from peaches and pineapple to asparagus and salmon.

'It's definitely unusual for one person to enter as much canning as he does,” said Karen McKilligan, assistant superintendent of food contests at the fair. 'He's known among the veteran competitors as the standard to strive for.”

Zeitler, 65, grew up on a farm near Keosauqua, attending a one-room schoolhouse and showing cattle, sheep and chickens through 4H. His mother canned produce so the family could have fruits and vegetables throughout the winter, but canning wasn't something boys did in those days, he said.

Zeitler's wife, Deborah, had been entering weaving and textiles in the Iowa State Fair for years when Rod Zeitler first entered a jam contest in the early 2000s.

'I didn't do a very good job reading the directions because I didn't have a recipe,” he said. 'The head space was all wrong. I didn't have any entries accepted that first year.”

Canning is all about chemistry - finding the right acidity, temperature and processing time to preserve the foods so they can be stored without refrigeration. But there's also the artistry of filling pint-size jars to best display the colors, shapes and textures of fresh fruits and vegetables.

Zeitler sorts carrot slices by size into bowls on his kitchen island. He boils one bowl for five minutes before putting the carrots in ice water to stop the cooking process. Rather than dumping the carrots higgledy-piddledy into a sterilized jar, Zeitler uses a fork to place each slice so its orange circle shape can be seen through the glass.

'I'm probably a little bit obsessive, but it's part of my nature as an internist,” he said.

After filling the jars with water used for boiling the carrots, Zeitler uses a narrow knife to painstakingly pop air bubbles, which can harbor bacteria. He screws on the lids and puts the jars into pressure cookers for 25 minutes.

Because eating improperly canned foods can cause food poisoning, Iowa State Fair judges do not taste canned veggies, meat, poultry and fish, McKilligan said.

Rather, judges open the jars and remove some of the food to test it for crispness and texture. They score the canned foods on color, consistency of size of the pieces within and whether the food stays packed at the bottom of jars.

Jellies, jams and canned fruits are tasted.

'The judges check the recipes to make sure they list the elevation of where the canning was done because that dictates processing time,” McKilligan said.

On Sunday, Rod and Deborah Zeitler will load their car with more than a dozen flats of canned goods - all the best versions of what Rod has canned over the course of the year - to drive to Des Moines for judging Tuesday. Deborah also will bring her 2017 contest entries, including a woven tapestry that says 'Keep calm and weave.”

Zeitler looks forward to the fair not only because his hard work is finally evaluated, but because the 11 days of the fair are days he's not in his kitchen canning.

'It's a break because I can't do anything during the fair,” he said.

He also reunites with other competitors, such as Tanya Hardy, 46, an Osceola music teacher, who plans to enter 81 food contests this year. She started with eight jams and jellies in 2011, but over the years Zeitler has persuaded her to expand her canning repertoire.

'They all said, ‘He can't be beaten,'” she said of her canning mentor and rival. But Hardy now gives Zeitler some tough competition.

'I'm more productive,” Zeitler said. 'But her quality is sometimes better than mine.”

Zeitler likes sharing his canned goods with friends, family and co-workers. Although food banks won't take home-canned foods, Zeitler prepares baskets for fundraisers at the Preucil School of Music. At some point, he plans to pair his photos with award-winning recipes to publish a canning cookbook.

In the meantime, when the fair ends Aug. 20, Zeitler will be back at it because as the tomatoes in his backyard garden ripen, it's time to make salsa, relish and canned tomatoes for next year's fair.

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