Every summer I’m surprised to see stacks of boxes of canning jars in grocery and hardware stores. It almost looks like there’s a canning frenzy going on. Who is buying the new jars? I’m sure I’ll be hearing from women who’ll tell me they’ve canned all their life. You can get canning jars at yard sales for next to nothing. Used ones are everywhere. Are some women canning one season and then giving it up? It’s a mystery to me.
Last summer I stopped in at a large yard sale at a church in Carleton Place. There were boxes and boxes of canning jars. Some were old. Some were used– maybe used one season. And there were boxes of jars that had never been used. They were all priced very low and no one seemed interested in them while I was browsing through used books. I’m sure at the end of the day the jars were there for the taking.
I know making homemade jams and jellies is still done, but women don’t use the large canning jars for that purpose. And it’s a much different process than canning garden produce.
I love green (or yellow) beans from the garden and grow a few rows every summer. I get more beans than we can use so most of the beans go into the freezer. Take the ends off, blanch them in hot water for four minutes, then in ice cold water, let them sit on a towel to dry and pack them into freezer bags or plastic containers. They are just as tasty in the winter months as the fresh ones now.
Canning was the most popular method of preserving when I was a youngster. My mother canned garden produce. That was 60 years ago. She was always irked when one or two jars from a batch had to be canned over –- on the hot wood stove –- because the lid hadn’t sealed tightly.
Some years ago there was talk to have a home canning food demonstration at our county plowing match. It was thought that such a show might attract young urban women and their families.
After some thought and probably quizzing young urbanites if they would go to a plowing match on a Saturday afternoon to learn about canning, it was decided to can the canning show idea.
The idea was good if there was interest. The art of canning isn’t handed down from mother to daughter as it used to be. Grocery stores have all the produce we want, every week of the year, at decent prices -– fresh and frozen. So why go to all the trouble and expense of canning when the produce can be picked up and eaten the same day? And if you have to buy the produce to can it, it certainly doesn’t make sense.
One obvious advantage of canning is that there is practically no storage problem. You can can until your basement pantry is full, whereas your freezer space is definitely limited to what goes in under the lid.
