Canning!

A wonderful woman I work with, is going to teach me to can fruits and vegetables once the season is here.
I'm so excited!
Canning used to be a necessity for people to learn. You learned to can the food that you grew, so that you could have food all year long. With fast food, and restaurants at such convenience, I believe my generation has lost the drive and necessity to learn how to can. Why bother when you can run down the street to the grocery store and get whatever you need? With bread getting close to $4 a loaf, I'd like to be a bit more independent when it comes to my food.

My obsession to learn how to can, along with some other food desires and obsessions, came from a book. Barbara Kingsolver (usually a fictional author) and her family, made the decision to live strictly, for a year, on the food that they grew and raised. They documented their experience and wrote, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life. There is a great website with more information about the book and resources for others who would like to do the same.

The 100 Mile Diet is another great diet for those who want to give back to the planet and eat locally. There is a whole group of fabulous citizens that live by this golden rule. They have a great website with lots of good information http://100milediet.org/. I try to follow this ideal as best as I can. I REALLY like bananas and would have a very difficult time giving them up, but with any other foods or needs, I try to shop as local as possible.


The woman I get to learn from, has got to be the most sustaining woman that I've met. She raised 4 children on 300 dollars a month in the 70's and 80's. She makes her own bread, grows her own veggies and fruits and cans them so that they have food all year. She has chickens and even knows how to cure her own meat. Now that her children are grown and gone, she's not doing as much, but she can still grind her own flour and grow her own food. She's amazing and she rarely has to go to the grocery store.