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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 cello 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

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.

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:

Are convenience foods really more convenient than home-preserved foods?

Are preserved foods always less nutritious than fresh ones?

Is home food preservation really feasible for today’s hyper-busy population?

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.

“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.

Home-preserving isn’t only about “putting up” jars of grape jelly and dill pickles. Recipes abound that will tempt your taste buds in unexpected ways.

IT’S ONLY NATURAL

My son stopped by for supper last night. 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, “It depends.” We won’t go into the cost-benefit numbers here because they are dependent upon a range a variables. From my personal experience, some foods, such as jams and pickles, are cheaper when you preserve them yourself. For most other fruits and vegetables that I preserve, it’s hard to compete with commercial canneries and warehouse food prices. But I don’t “put up” (canning lingo for “preserve”) my food for the economics of it. I do it for the joy of being my own food steward.

If you grow your own produce or can walk up and shake the hand of the guy who did, you’re more likely to know exactly what you’re getting in that jar of applesauce.

When you preserve your own food, you enjoy the benefit of knowing exactly where your food came from, how old it is, and what’s in the container along with your food. Consider a recent newspaper headline, “BPA Found in Almost All Canned Food.” When you do your own food preservation, stories about bisphenol-A and other harmful by-products aren’t troublesome.

For those who are concerned about chemical additives and preservatives, sodium and sugar levels, and large amounts of high-fructose corn syrup, to name just a few of the current food-related issues, there is comfort in controlling these factors. When you preserve your own food, there’s no need to read ingredient labels so conscientiously. There are no mysterious ingredients hiding behind a hand-penned label that reads “Tomatoes, July 2012.” That’s just good, wholesome food!

THE SOONER, THE BETTER

Home food preservation isn’t difficult, but it does require some forethought. Fruits and vegetables are at their peak in terms of flavor and nutrition at the moment they are picked. This is as good as it gets—canning or freezing will not improve the quality. Every minute that separates the time of picking from the moment of preservation causes a loss of quality and nutrition in the product. Thus, it’s very important to plan your picking or visit to the farmer’s market so that you can preserve the bounty quickly. My mother told me not to bother making pickles if the cukes were even a day old! Some vegetables are more time sensitive than others, but all experts agree that soonest is best.

BUT IS IT NUTRITIOUS?

Those who claim that the preserved version cannot compete with its fresh counterpart and that frozen is far better than canned alternatives haven’t read the fine print when it comes to nutritional values. Eating fresh-picked fruits or vegetables is best, but if you want something “fresh” in February in New England, going to your local grocery—even the high-end, overpriced boutiques—won’t ensure that you will get fresh vegetables and fruits with the highest nutritional value. If your produce has been trucked or flown in from distant parts of the country or world, in addition to upping the carbon footprint, they have left much of their nutrients in the cargo hold. Compare these “fresh” fruits and vegetables to those that you’ve canned, frozen, or dried just minutes after the harvest. While it’s indisputable that freshly picked local produce offers the highest quality in terms of taste and nutrition, information from unbiased sources such as the University of California at Davis, the University of Illinois, and the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), show that if you choose to freeze, can, or otherwise preserve your summer harvest, you will most likely enjoy nutritional benefits equal to or better than the produce at your grocery. And considering the cost of produce during the off-season, your summer investment should be both tasty and economical.

If you find yourself gobbling up canned peaches from the supermarket, why not try to can some at home? Find fresh peaches at a local orchard for the best flavor and nutrition.

A BIT OF HISTORY

Because food begins to spoil the moment is it harvested or killed, people throughout history have sought to develop safe ways to preserve the bounty of today for use tomorrow. Food preservation enabled ancient hunter/gatherers to settle in one place, put down roots—figuratively and literally—and begin to enjoy the benefits of civilization. People have employed various methods of preservation tailored to their circumstances and their needs, in much the same fashion as we do today. The primary methods were drying, freezing/cold storage, fermenting, pickling, curing, making jams and jellies using fruit and sugar or honey, and more recently, canning.

WHERE IT BEGAN

Evidence suggests that the oldest form of preservation was drying. Middle Eastern and Asian cultures as early as 12,000 BC dried their food in the hot sun. Dried foods allowed seafarers to extend the range of their explorations, eventually circumnavigating the globe. Fermentation was discovered accidentally when a few grains of barley were left in the rain. Through fermentation, microorganisms changed (fermented) starch-derived sugars into alcohols. This process had multiple benefits: food was more nutritious, more palatable, and in many cases, produced an alcoholic beverage—nectar of the gods! Curing and pickling both employed substances to change the chemistry of the food being preserved. In the case of pickling, vinegar and other acidic materials were found to provide climates unfriendly to the bacteria responsible for food spoilage, thus extending a food’s usable life. Curing utilized salt, nitrites, and smoke to preserve foods, inhibit the growth of Clostridium botulinium (botulism), and improve the taste and color of the food.

Home food preservation is certainly nothing new. One of the first preservation methods was drying foods in the sun. Dried fruits certainly haven’t lost favor over time.

The same foods that could be preserved by being dried could also be successfully preserved using other methods, such as freezing. Cranberries are a good example of this.

Freezing and cold storage were initially limited by geography. The 1800s brought the discovery of mechanical refrigeration, and eventually Clarence Birdseye perfected quick-freezing. While cold storage would significantly slow down the biological processes that caused the food to spoil and decompose, freezing would stop them altogether.

WHERE CANNING COMES IN

While it seems like an honorable old convention, canning is really the newcomer on the home food-preservation scene. In the 1790s, French confectioner and father of canning Nicolas Appert experimented for nearly fifteen years in an attempt to win an award offered by French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, who needed a practical way to feed his armies. Appert’s efforts were successful: he discovered that applying heat to food in sealed glass bottles helped to prevent food deterioration. Not only did he win Bonaparte’s award, but the House of Appert became the first commercial cannery in the world. While Appert’s methods were widely applied—meat, vegetables, fruit, and milk were processed in glass bottles and, later, tin cans—it wasn’t until Louis Pasteur that we really understood why the heat application helped preserve the food. Pasteur’s discovery of pasteurization in 1864 clarified the relationship between microorganisms, food spoilage, and illness, which we’ll discuss in the next chapter.

REALLY GREEN GREENS: A WORD ABOUT SUSTAINABILITY

It is hard to argue that a venerable institution such as home food preservation—including canning, freezing, perfecting homemade jams and jellies, and the like—could be anything but green and sustainable. A Carnegie Mellon University study reports that 11 percent of the average American’s household food-related greenhouse gas emissions come from the transportation of foods. According to that study, in the United States, food travels an average of 4,000 to 5,000 miles from its source to our table. Certainly, if you are home-canning locally grown produce, you are reducing the environmental impact of transporting produce across the country and around the world in off-seasons.

Think about it: peaches that travel thousands of miles to get to your supermarket are certainly going to be less fresh, flavorful, and nutritious than the peach you just plucked from the tree.

What’s a Locavore?

This new word aptly describes a rapidly growing “species” of human in today’s food-conscious society. Locavores want food that is fresh, healthy, sustainable, and local. No long-distance transportation that compromises the food quality, adds to the cost, and comes with a big carbon footprint. Locavores seek and savor seasonal foods that grow near them.

Canning your food is a great way to take control of what’s in the food that you eat, ensuring that it’s great-tasting and nutritious. You will most likely save a good amount of money in your food budget because you’ll have your own supply of nutritious “convenience” foods. But as you are thinking about where and how you will get the foods that you want to can, don’t forget the locavore’s mantra: think local. It’s true that you can sometimes get great bargains at wholesale food clubs, but think twice before you buy. The food that large wholesale clubs offer is often produced on industrialized farms using conventional growing methods (think pesticides, herbicides, genetically engineered seeds). It’s likely picked before it’s ripe so that it can withstand a long transport and handling time, during which it will have lost a great deal of its nutrients and fresh taste; and if it’s transported over long distances, which such produce often is, distributors will have used a great deal of our energy resources (gas and oil for transport and electricity for refrigeration) to get your bargain produce from farm to store.

There are sustainable alternatives! Obviously, you can grow your own fruits and veggies. If you don’t have adequate garden space where you live, perhaps your community offers garden plots that you can use or rent for a nominal fee during the growing season. Want the fruits of the labor without the actual labor? Join a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) group and share in the bounty of local farmers. Check out local farmers’ markets or farm stands. When produce is in season, you can often get very good prices by speaking directly with the farmer—and, most importantly, you get exceptionally fresh produce!

If you live in an urban area and don’t have the space (or, perhaps, the inclination) to grow your own veggies, many urban neighborhoods have bountiful farmers’ markets you can visit.

Combine gardening with home preservation and you will be living green and saving green, according to knowledgeable (albeit differing) sources. W. Atlee Burpee & Company, the largest seed and garden supply company in the United States, reports that families who garden will see a twenty-five-to-one return on their investment. The National Gardening Association also has positive (though more modest) claims. They state that a $70 investment in a garden will net a $600 harvest.

Of course, you want to be thoughtful about the food that you put into your body and the bodies of those dear to you. While it seems like home food preservation would, by its very nature, be a green, sustainable venture, it’s not always that simple. You need to look beyond the immediacy of your choice—beyond the heart-tugging, high-profile claims of those on the green bandwagon—and look at the entire system of food preservation that you employ. Throughout this book, I will invite you to be thoughtful in your choices and to look at both short-term and long-term implications.

What does it really cost to can, freeze, dry, and so on? Yes, we want to eat locally and maximize the benefits of each growing season, but it’s wise to balance your passion for sustainability by looking at all of the numbers, not just the ones that make the headlines. The cost of running that freezer 24/7 for twelve months a year is significantly more than the cost to can a batch of tomatoes. And that’s only the consumer’s cost of energy. What about the environmental impact of manufacturing the freezer and transporting it from factory to home…or the cost of producing the electricity to run the freezer? The choices can get sticky. Throughout this book, we’ll include tips and tricks for keeping your food preservation wholesome, nutritious, sustainable, and fun! Now that we’ve covered much of the background, let’s get started!