Читать книгу Canning Essentials - Jackie Callahan Parente - Страница 6

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.