It's a dying art.

One of the things that I do, and I do believe it is a dying art is can.  You know what I mean, preserving food for consumption later in the year when fresh is not as easy to acquire.  Now I see a lot of posts about preserving food due to budgetary concerns, however this has never been my motivation.  When I was growing up our mother was not in the home, this was the 70's and my dad was tasked with trying to care for and raise 3 children.  We were farmers, but because of society constraints he was not prepared for this.  We lived on frozen (thank god for the invention of T.V. dinners), boxed and tinned food.  We had to be able to prepare a meal and feed ourselves when he was busy farming.  Can you say Spaghettio's!!!  We tried classing it up and we added ground beef, and quite seriously thought we were gourmet cooks.  To this day I still have a soft spot for t.v. dinner mashed potatoes.  All our potatoes came from a can or box.  I digress, so back to the matter of canning, my motivation has always been to feed my family real food.  When I can, I know what went into it.  I feel it is worth the effort to do this, and now that the birds have left the nest, I make enough for all the households, so they can eat well.  

Our weekend started with a trip to a tomato field across from where I work.  The lovely farmer always drops by and tells me where to go to pick.  He grows a few different things, I usually get cucumbers for pickles, sweet corn, and tomatoes.  The last couple of years I stopped making pickles, and I still have corn left over from last year, so that is out.  Just tomatoes this year.  After I bribed my son with a trip to Tim Horton's for an ice cap he helped me pick three large laundry baskets full and we spent the rest of the day shopping.

Sunday I got up early to begin production in Chef Boyardee's  kitchen.  I made salsa, bruchetta, spaghetti sauce, and pizza sauce.  I worked all day Sunday and still had one and half baskets left.  Monday night was more pizza and spaghetti sauce.  I have one full basket left for tonight and I need to make more salsa and spaghetti sauce, wrapping it up with just plain stewed tomatoes.  I work 11 hours a day at my job, and then head home to work until 10pm in the kitchen, not because I have to, but because I really want to.

The finished product.

There is another aspect to this that I feel proud of, I can look after myself.  A lot of the people I talk to always think we do these things because we are "cheap".  That's just not it, Ragu is cheap when it goes on sale, but should there ever come a day when I can no longer purchase store bought items, I know I possess  the skill and knowledge to make my own.