Canning is literally “spreading the love.” When you prepare a complex holiday meal, and exert all kinds of energy preparing it, it is of course appreciated by all, right? But the results of that meal typically don’t last long! Other than the next-day turkey sandwiches and two-days-later mashed potatoes, your efforts really can’t be enjoyed later.
With canning, however, when you spend a few hours preserving delicious produce you’ve hand selected, you’ll be enjoying it literally months afterwards! And when you’re at your busiest, you can reach for those canned goods you’d made and feel the satisfaction of that time you spent again and again. By the way, if you grow the produce yourself, then you get double the satisfaction of spreading the fruits of your labor over the course of the year. No green thumb?
Me either, really, but don’t worry. There are countless local growers and sources for fresh produce and canning has lots of love to share beyond home gardeners and old women.
Indeed, canning gives you both choice and authorship over what you eat. And without a doubt, eating healthy is THE hottest health topic around . . . and for good reason! We all know someone who has lived what we would consider a healthful life, and yet has suffered from one chronic disease or another. And surely, what we eat has played at least some small part in our health, right? I realize we cannot control everything and I would never suggest that everyone needs to start their own homestead or garden plot out back. But I will suggest that learning how to can gives you greater choice and is a phenomenon that’s currently absent from most every grocery store aisle in America.