Food Preservation

What better way to spend this heaty and skeety season than an afternoon of food preservation?! Making an edible time capsule of the glories of summer? Perfectly ripe canned summer tomatoes can transform a dish all year long and are honestly sooooo much tastier than most store bought varieties. Food preservation also helps to lighten our footprint on the earth, build local economy and reduce our exposure to industrial toxins.

Canned foods are lined in either BPA or BPA-like substances. BPA (and likely many of the new chemicals used to replace it) is an estrogen mimic, binding to estrogen receptors and thus disrupting hormone balance in the body towards a net estrogen effect with no negative feedback loop. Canning, freezing or buying shelf stable foods in glass jars is one way to reduce our exposure to these substances in preserved foods. Eating locally grown produce also reduces the carbon footprint of our consumption, grounds us in mutually supportive relationships with our beloved local farmers, supporting local economy and waste is reduced as the jars and rings can be reused year after year, though the lids should be replaced yearly.

I realized years ago that the act of canning and food preservation in general, can also reconnect us with our ancestors and our past, as we call come from humans who practiced traditional methods of food preservation for survival. Growing up, my mom, uncle and grandmother canned tomatoes and made tomato sauce based dishes with it through the year. One of my favorite things to sneak wooden spoonfuls of was my mom’s tomato sauce as it simmered away on the stove-top, though she almost always heard the clank of the pot and knew what I was up to. The speckled blue canning pot we use today was my grandmothers.

Canning tomatoes is one of the food preservation projects that we prioritize in our home. It takes ~1 or so active hours per batch (7 pints or quarts in each batch) and a few batches usually last us the whole year. We still have 7 quarts from last year when we made 3 batches! Thank you to my hubby Chef John @schaalfoods for keeping these traditional food projects alive and happening in our home. I’m a good helper but he is the catalyst. Thank you to @sevensistersfarmnc for these beautiful Roma tomatoes and Mother Earth for always providing. Questions about canning? Drop a line below and I’ll do my best to answer. Happy canning!

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