If you are going to eat local...eventually you will want tomatoes in the winter, something sweet for your toast, and more. Luckily, you can find good quality canned and frozen foods that are local in Portland, just go to New Seasons Market or somewhere like it. However, that stuff is a little too expensive for my tiny budget. So what to do? Can it yourself.
This year I have canned a lot of foods for the year ahead: 19 quarts of tomatoes, 8 quarts of beets, ~30 1/2 pints of jam of various flavors (mostly blackberry that I can pick just about anywhere in this city for free), and ~10 1/2 pints of of tuna. Maybe next year I'll add some dill pickles to my list.
Canning is serious business, and if you are thinking about it I recommend you get the 'bible' of canning and follow it's instructions and recipes (for canning practically anything)...the
Ball Blue book, which can be purchased on their website for just $6. You certainly don't want to poison yourself or your loved ones by improper technique.
Upfront costs of canning are sort of high. You're buying a lot of produce, e.g. my two boxes of tomatoes cost around $50. You need at least two big pots, I prefer to use my pressure cooker for the jar processing, I can use it as a water bath
canner as well as a pressure
canner. Low acid foods and meats must be pressure canned. And you need jars and some spare lids. The good news is jars and the
canner/pots will be re-used again and again so those are one-time expenses...unless you increase production next year and get more jars; you will need to get new lids next year. A jar lifter and little lid magnet stick are also great helps. When I was just doing jam I used tongs and a big pot and it worked just fine...but it was sort of dangerous.
The good news is once your operation is set up, your ready to go every year. The food costs are high, but much lower than what you'd pay for the same thing in the store. I see quality local jams at farm stands for $8 a pop...and I'm spending $25 on some strawberries to make 8-10 of the same, so the savings add up to around $30-40 over the year...depending on how much you spent on the sugar and pectin. And then there's the 'love' component. I mean, there is nothing as good as raiding your own reserves, or you gram's or mom's. The love is there, and you can't eat that from any store local or otherwise.
The final drawback of canning is the reason this post is a bit less optimistic than most...the time component. Being a chiropractic student not only is my financial budget tight, but so is the time availability. Every canning experience this year, besides the jam, has cut into precious weekend time. I always underestimate when to start and ultimately decide that after a luxuriously lazy morning would be best. This results in very late nights in my kitchen. Not one of my summer/fall projects did I start before noon, and not one of those nights did I get to bed before 1:30 AM. The reality is that I only got to bed then last night because my boyfriend took pity on me and helped out at the end, most nights were until 3:00AM. I'm exhausted!
I know this will all pay off in the end though. It already is. I have used the tuna, the tomatoes, the jam all before now; the beets will be pickled and ready for consumption on Christmas Day. The
canner is being cleaned and put away in the closet and so are the beets this Halloween.
No effort is ever wasted. Here's hoping that my efforts will inspire your own, and this year will be tastier and lighter on my checking account!
