Why We Preserve
With the ease of grocery stores you might wonder why bother canning and dehydrating? Organic food purchasing and ingredient reading has become a lot more common in the past years as we become more and more aware of what is in our food. When water bath canning, pressure canning, and dehydrating or freeze-drying, there is no need to read the ingredient list, as all the ingredients are visible through the glass jars on our shelf.
Anything worth doing is worth doing well. If we are going to take our health seriously, we need to put in the work. It is easy to purchase organic, but can we afford it? The cost of groceries is increasing with inflation, making the necessity of eating a greater stress on our wallets. Once you add the price of organic to the rising cost of food, we may find ourselves reverting to less-healthy options for cost savings benefits but sacrificing our health.
If you have not checked it out yet, read our post entitled “How to Save Money Canning”. There are a lot of ways to work towards achieving a self-made, cost-effective home pantry. Growing a garden does not have to take up as much space as you might think. Whether in a condominium, basement suite or on a homestead, with practice you can grow some or all of your own food every year.
Learning these age-old preserving methods could not only be a great way to provide your family with healthier food but could one day become the norm for you and your family as the reality of supply chain breakdown becomes less of a theory. It is only in recent years we have become dependent on grocery stores and supply chains. This dependency has relinquished a lot of the control we have over what is on our plates or not on our plates, and more people are wanting that control back.
Home preserving salsa yields us around 20-quart jars for around $30-40, allowing us to control the ingredients and cost of the overall product. At the rate that our family consumes salsa, this is not only huge cost savings but a benefit to our overall health. Think about the things your family consumes on a regular basis. Can you replace these snacks with foods you can dehydrate? Can you make your version, canning in large quantities to last throughout the year? The relish recipe that we made in September has become a new staple in our fridge, replacing not only store-bought relish but other sandwich spreads and dips that used to be on the shopping list. Desserts can be canned peaches or jams drizzled over ice cream. Snacks can be dehydrated apples, fruit leather, sourdough crackers, roasted pumpkin seeds, homemade granola, and more. Rather than eating processed sugary and salty snacks found on store shelves, we should be looking for ways to fill our pantries with healthy alternatives we can make ourselves.
These forms of preservation were commonplace not that long ago. It is important to not only relearn these methods of survival but teach them to a generation that is far removed from their food. Understanding where your food comes from, the effort that goes into making it, and the delight of eating a meal fully curated out of self-made items is an experience that should not skip generations or disappear altogether.
Starting is easier than you think! Check out our products for pressure canning and freeze drying as well as food storage products. Mylar bags and oxygen absorbers make storing food for long periods easy, allowing you to process large quantities of food all in one go. Watch for upcoming blog posts on pressure canning, freeze drying, and dehydrating to get a better understanding of how these methods of preservation could fit into your new yearly routine!
May God bless you and your families,
Good2GoCo Family