Canning Saves You Time
I’m Jenny, and I blog at The Domestic Wildflower, and I LOVE sharing canning (especially super fast steam canning) with beginners.
There's a lot of reasons to start canning, but I wanted to share with you why I love it so much, and why I think you'll love it too.
It's true, you can save a lot of money by canning cheap, peak-season produce, and that's a wonderful benefit no doubt.
Canning your own food is delicious, there's no denying it. Homemade tomato sauce in the middle of the winter is such a welcome addition to blah meals and grey days, and sunny tasting strawberry jam makes any rainy morning better. Home canned foods are miles better than anything you'll buy in a store, hands down. You get the choice of choosing organic produce if you prefer, and you get to decide which recipes make the cut- and which don’t. If you decide no added sugar for your family, then that’s what you preserve. There’s great freedom in canning in this way.
Serving homemade, nutritious food is so satisfying and makes me feel like a good mom. I really love being able to choose a healthy snack that I made for my kids quickly instead of giving in and grabbing something super-processed and full of sugar from the store.
Giving a gift of fresh bagels and a jar of my jam to a new mom friend or good-quality pasta with a jar of my tomato sauce as a housewarming gift feels 1000 times better than giving a store-bought knick knack.
Despite all this, the best reason to love canning, for me, is that canning saves time.
I know, you probably find this really hard to believe. I swear, canning is such a time saver that I get nervous if I can't get my hands on enough tomatoes in the summer to preserve to last for the whole year.
Canning is cooking in advance. The sauces, the pickles, the fruit cups, the juices, are all prepared and cooked ahead of time. You know the advice about investing and how accruing interest is so important? Canning is like Edward Jones, my friend. Canning is investing for your pantry and your meal-time sanity.
You won't start out canning All. The. Things. You'll start with an easy batch of raspberry jam and get the hang of the process and realize that hey, this doesn't take that long!
Then, you'll think how handy it would be to have yummy roasted peppers on hand to put into Mexican dishes and on hot sandwiches, so you'll make roasted bells next.
By then it will be stone-fruit season and you'll think about canning your own fruit cups for the kids or yourself, and slowly but oh-so-surely, you'll be filling your pantry shelves THE SAME WAY YOU ADD TO A SAVINGS ACCOUNT.
Just as you don't have to save $1000 a month in order to save for your future, you can preserve a batch here and there and still reap the benefits. In fact, one batch a month will get you a supply of jams, pickles, applesauce, tomato sauce and more with a little effort and a huge return.
It is so dang handy to grab a few jars of cherry and peach fruit cups for my kids when we head out the door- I don't worry about how much sugar is inside (almost none, and I know because I made it that way), I'm not feeling mom-guilt because of the potential BPA in a plastic container (none in glass jars!) or spending money on a prepackaged, can't be recycled convenience item. THAT IS SAVING TIME.
Canning saves mental energy, worry, stress, shopping time, and money.
The absolute best way to get started canning is by using a steam canner. Traditional water bath canners are great, but they take about 20 minutes longer than a steam canner EVERY BATCH. That’s a huge difference. Not only are steam canners much faster, they are so much lighter. They use only a few quarts of water and are ideal for canning in a busy home. If you’re interested in starting canning, Victorio has a bundle that has everything you need to start steam canning and nothing you don’t. Get it here!
