easily accessible, and succinct instructions. I’ve designed it so that you can quickly get just the information that you need.
Are you new to home food preservation? Concerned about safety, nutrition, and sustainability? Focus on chapters 1 and 2. You’ll gain a historical perspective, while reviewing the many benefits of home preservation and learning about food safety and spoilage issues. You’ll see that today’s home food-preservation techniques go far beyond the Mason jar. Chapter 2 helps you choose home food-preservation methods that best support your objectives in terms of nutrition, ease, and sustainability. Many folks have strong opinions about what method is best. Bottom line: what is best is whatever works for you and your family.
Equipped with information about the scope of food procurement and preservation, you can choose the chapter that gives you specifics about the method you’re most interested in. Look at chapters 3 through 6 for details on each of the various preservation methods that we cover: freezing, canning (water bath and pressure), making jellies and jams, and pickling and fermenting. Chapter 7 offers current recipes from Amish and Mennonite kitchens—the source of delicious homegrown taste and simple recipes. This book offers a concise survey of safe preservation methods along with tasty and convenient recipes. Because sustainability is in the forefront of many people’s minds, I offer tips and options that are eco-friendly.
You will also find handy reference information in the appendix, such as conversion charts, techniques, and more. This book is a great first step into the world of home food preservation. Enjoy the adventure! Home food preservation is a hobby that easily turns into a lifestyle.
CHAPTER 1
A Contemporary Perspective
Food preservation has been a part of our human discourse since the dawn of civilization. From the perspective of the twenty-first century, the needs and motives of our ancestors may feel remote. But it is no less true now than it was millennia ago: you are what you eat. What has changed is the society in which we live and the food growing, gathering, processing, and preservation options now available to us. We learned that we could maximize the crop yields through monoculture, chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and industrial-size farming implements. We stopped taking ownership of our food gathering and learned to rely on commercial resources, often under the questionable banner of “convenience.” Dual-income families with an average of two-and-one-third children who played soccer, tennis, piano, and more didn’t have the time to cook a meal let alone consider the possibility of home food preservation. Today, much of our food “grows” in the cans, bottles, and cellophane packs that line our grocery shelves. Or even more conveniently, our meals come to us fully prepared through an anonymously staffed drive-through window. Unlike our ancestors, we have many and varied choices regarding how we gather and store our food. Food gathering doesn’t need to be delegated to nameless industrial farms and processing plants. If we want, we can take ownership of some or all of this food stewardship. While the degree of urgency may feel different today than it did for other civilizations throughout history, the core values are the same: preserve good, healthy food when it’s abundant to sustain us during times of scarcity.
If you picked up this volume, you are most likely choosing to take a more hands-on approach than many in our society. Let’s explore some of the reasons why taking this ownership of home food preservation makes sense today—how it can be convenient, safe, satisfying, and nutritious. We’ll take a short look back at some of the history, and we’ll look at some more contemporary issues of sustainability.
THE REAL CONVENIENCE FOOD
My mother grew up in poverty on a farm in Ohio. When she was a child, her family had no choice but to maximize what they took out of the soil and use or preserve every scrap. As her child a generation later, I helped her can and freeze the fruits and vegetables that we grew. We’d freeze sides of beef and pork that we had ordered from local farmers. With this stored bounty, we could spend the winter tapping into the jars on the shelves under the basement stairs and the goods frozen in our large chest freezer. Having grown up in the 1950s, I also remember how so-called convenience foods began to appear in our kitchen and on our supper table. Processed foods with extended shelf lives seemed to make food storage and preparation easier. As we all know, that trend became the norm.
Without getting into the fray of arguments between industrialized food and sustainable farming, let’s revisit this notion of convenience food and dispel some of the fallacies surrounding home food preservation:
Convenience is subjective, of course. But with a little planning and about the time you would spend watching one episode of your favorite sitcom, you can have a number of wholesome meals sitting in the freezer. And having a winter’s worth of vegetables, fruits, and meats stored under your own roof can save you some visits to the grocery store. That seems pretty convenient. Want to give some very special holiday gifts without enduring the hassle and expense of shopping? Who wouldn’t be thrilled to get a jar of your homemade jam, pickles, or salsa? It’s easy to create custom labels and pretty packaging, too.
What’s more convenient than going out to the garden and picking tomatoes for your salad? Perhaps stepping into your pantry for a jar of canned tomatoes.
“But home food preservation is too complicated,” you protest. “Myth,” I retort. First, you do not need to have an advanced degree or special training to put away food that is safe and nutritious. Current generations do lack the personal tutoring that was available for prior generations, but you’ll find plenty of support available through your local Cooperative Extension Service, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), and canning and preserving groups such as Canning Across America, which orchestrated a nationwide “canvolution” and National Can-It-Forward Day to raise awareness of and support interest in canning. And according to Jarden Home Brands (makers of Ball- and Kerr-brand Mason jars, based in Daleville, Indiana), industry sales of canning equipment were up 35 percent in 2011. That means there are a lot of folks who are interested in getting back to home food preservation, so you’re sure to find a buddy.
IT’S ONLY NATURAL
My son stopped by for supper recently. He’s definitely a foodie, with a strong interest in organic gardening, but he also lives on a shoestring, with a strong interest in economical foods. For dessert, we had a compote of frozen, locally grown peaches; my homemade chocolate raspberry sauce; and homemade vanilla yogurt. “It’s cheaper to make your yogurt than it is to buy it, right, Mom?” he asked. I really wanted to give him the answer he was looking for and respond emphatically, “Yes, of course it is.” The answer is,