Two Hands and a Roadmap

Um, hot water bath of love? I'm running out of innuendo here.

Photo credit: _karen_

I don’t know why my blog design blocks out the title like that, but the word you can’t quite read is “canning.” Why you should try home canning.

Wait, don’t click out.

I kept thinking of suggestive titles for this post that might get people’s attention — “What to do with a dozen rubber rings and just a little electricity” or “Hot syrup and headspace”– but heck with it. Sooner or later people will figure out that this a post about food preservation, and then they’ll be ticked off at me for trying to disguise it.

I know it goes: You talk about stocking your freezer and people smile. Dehydrating? Neat-o. Bring up canning, though, and everyone suddenly has something else to do — like wash their hair, write poetry, or parent their child. With the benefits of local eating gaining national attention from people like Michael Pollan and Barbara Kingsolver, I think it’s just a matter of time before this old-timey activity sees a resurgence, and then where will you be Mr. Smuggypants? Yeah, that’s what I thought.

We’ve already canned jam from the strawberries and cherries we picked. In addition, our backyard grapevines are going nuts right now, and I’m going to have my hands full making/canning juice and jelly. Soon I’ll bring my big canner back out in anticipation of tomatoes.

I have a post almost ready to go about the process of canning, but first want to explain why I bother. So today I offer you:

Why I can fruits and vegetables

• It’s not that hard. Do you hear me? It’s not. I do it, and people, I am not that bright.

• It’s not all or nothing. I only bring out the canner and jars for jams, jellies, and tomatoes. No need to go crazy with the power or anything.

• It’s inexpensive. You’ll have to lay out a little money at the beginning, but nothing compared to most of your other hobbies. Buy a canner, jars, and lids, then lay off the yarn and scrapbooking paper for a few weeks.

• Freezing won’t always cut it. Freezing is a great way to preserve many kinds of produce without killing too many nutrients, but some foods suffer in texture or flavor in the freezer. A lot of  jams and jellies can be frozen, but if I did that, there’d be no room for anything else, like grass-fed beef or my hidden stash of cookies.

• You don’t need a garden. We have a small backyard garden, but it doesn’t really produce enough for us to can the vegetables. However, there are a lot of farms and farm stands east of us. I just found one that will sell me a bushel of tomatoes for $24. I’ll bring them home and can them for use during the off-season. The vegetables there are cheaper than the supermarket, taste better, and you don’t have to grow them.

• If you do have to buy the produce in this way, you’re supporting local farmers or gardeners.

• It tastes so much better than what you buy at the store. Seriously, no comparison.

• No BPA in your tomatoes.

• No lead in your fruit juice. (Well, probably. It’s not clear from this article whether the lead is coming from the soil or the processing or what. But I’m guessing your home-canned juices will be safer. Or maybe I’m just trying to keep myself from freaking out about lead in our food.)
  

With all this in mind, I hope at least a few people are interested in giving this a shot with me. I’ll be posting general instructions for canning soon, with later posts specifically for tomatoes, grape juice, and grape jelly. So get your, ahem, hot rings ready for some steamy sealing, and meet me back here later.

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