Home Canning?

I’ve been following a series of articles in The Tyee called The Hundred Mile Diet. I’ve enjoyed the articles more as they’ve strayed away from the political soapbox and delved more into the food side of things.

Their latest article talks about canning, and they say the following:

Preparing for a Hundred-Mile winter is like adding a part-time job to our full-time lives. Like most Vancouverites, we're stupidly overscheduled most of the time. Adding hours of gleaning and canning to our days has more than once pushed us into the wee hours of the morning. "Sometime in the winter, this will all pay off," says Alisa like a mantra. "We won't have to buy any food; we won't have to cook any food." In the meantime, though, tempers flare as midnight ticks past and there are still 48 ears of corn to husk, blanch and cut into niblets for freezing.

I can so relate to that comment. The first year I tried my hand at pickles, in my small but very functional apartment kitchen, I was up until past midnight making batch after batch of them – five different kinds in all. My wife laughs about it now, but at the time...

The summer my daughter was born, I was still able to make a lot of stuff. Since then though, I’ve started grad school and have a toddler at home. This summer I’ve made nothing. Not a single jar of jam, no pickles, nothing. Stupidly overscheduled is certainly one way to put it.

Ok, I lied. I did manage to make and jar some applesauce on the weekend because we got some free apples from our friend’s tree; but compared to the cases of jam I made in the summer of 2004, and the several dozen jars of marmalade in January, I’ve done nothing.

We are beginning to realize that a Hundred-Mile Diet doesn't only hint at a more ecologically sustainable way to eat and drink. It also points to a deeper shift – an actual change in life patterns.

I wish them luck in their quixotic enterprise. Let’s see if they apply it to everything else they buy, like clothes, furniture, glassware …

As for me, well, maybe I'll get a chance to make some marmelade after Christmas, but I won't hold my breath. At least the cellar still has lots of the bounty of 2004.