Everything Old Is New Again

When I was growing up in Iowa, my dad was really into gardening. We had a huge garden. Dad viewed gardening as a family adventure and expected everyone to help bring in the harvest. I had a pretty extreme phobia of bees. That is asubject for another blog, but needless to say, I spent those summer gardening sessions in a constant state of fear looking around for bees.

Dad was the boss of the gardening process, but mom was queen of the canning/preserving process. She seemed especially fond of canning pickles. Every summer we would end up with countless jars of pickles prepared in every shape andvariety.

Of course, I thought this whole canning thing was torture. Every summer my sisters and I washed, trimmed, and chopped whatever we were canning that day. The acidic tomato juice ran down our arms, stinging when it ran into cuts. When we didbeets we would look like we were wearing purple gloves for days. We would do multiple batches of whatever veggie or fruit for that day. The pressure cooker would be boiling on the stove, clacking away. With all of that intense cooking, it was a million degrees in the house with no air conditioning.

Ironically, I look back on those memories with fondness now. I can appreciate that canning/preserving food was actually a bonding experience and something special that we did together as a family. Growing and preserving food has given me a deeper appreciation of a process that has been with us throughout thehistory of mankind. These life sustaining techniques have allowed humanity to advance from preparing food on the frontier to finding ways to preserve food for space exploration. Call me a nerd, but I think that is rather cool.

With our troubled economy, there has been a renewed interest in gardening and preserving food to save money. For those of you interested in learning more aboutpreserving your own food, here are some helpful links:

• USA.gov canning results page includes links on canning vegetables, canning safety, and even some recipes for salsa and pickles.
• Freezing and Food Safety
• TheDo's and Don'ts of Freezing Food
• Cost of Preserving and Storing Food

My final word on all of this? Several years ago, my parents sold their house to my sister and her family. What do you think my sister found when she was cleaning out the basement? Behind a stack of board games she found jars and jars of pickles, 32 of them, all dated from the 1970s!