Canned goods are not just in the commercially canned containers.
Not too far in the distant past, most of the preserved foods had little to do with added preservatives, but with canning. The first canning process was developed as a French military discovery by Nicolas Appert. In 1800, Napoleon Bonaparte offered an award of 12,000 francs to anyone who could conceive of a practical method for food preservation for armies on the march; he is widely reported as saying “An army marches on its stomach”. After about 14 or 15 years of trial and error, Appert presented his invention and won the prize in 1810. Home-canning has a history, however; home canning is not a thing of the past.Preparation Step 11: Food (part one) Grow it! But once you have grown it in abundance, what is the plan?Home Canners are also quite inexpensive and double as other kitchen cooking utensils as well, making them a wise investment.
If you are following this blog, you may remember that one of our biggest skills we hope everyone will develop is grow your food.
Of course, harvesting seeds and eating fresh foods, is the first – but most of the time garden grown produce is best canned at home. It is not as difficult as one might think and there are many books and step-by-step instruction booklets to get started.
With minimal work, you can prolong your garden efforts well into the next year and enjoy home-canned, home-grown foods for a long time to come!
If you missed the radio show I did on canning meat and dairy (I had a phobia of canning meat and dairy until I had this guest on the show) click this link and give it a listen:
http://www.bepreparedradio.com/2011/02/16/your-preparation-station-02-17-2011/#comment-1705
We have done several shows on other food storage methods…with more to come…so tune in.
Until then, look for great canning tools at our online store:
http://www.millersgrainhouse.com/store/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=15&zenid=bc2b71ad072233d390c4463abe70c192
