Canning: worth it?

this is one thing ive always thought would be a good skill to learn for a TEOTWAWKI situation, but not something id use in real life. i like my veggies either fresh or frozen, my strawberry freezer jam is nothing to sneeze at, and i like refrigerator pickles.

I've done a lot of canning. I used to do 2000+ jars a year for my family. It probably isn't going to save you much money unless you grow your own stuff or get free stuff, but you are able to make things just as you like them. I still miss my homecanned clean-out the garden vegetable soup. Making your own fancy stuff will save you some money.

For me, it's just knowing exactly what went into the food we're eating. I don't have to think or worry about preservatives, or GMO vs. non-GMO, or whether there might be a recall due to questionable suppliers or practices that fell apart.....I KNOW everything that went into that jar of food and how it was produced (I've only canned our home-grown veggies). I feel more secure eating our home-canned produce than I do buying off the shelf.

We don't save a whole lot of money home-canning our produce, and I can't really say I enjoy the work - but I do feel it's worth the effort, for me anyway. And yesterday I made spaghetti sauce from a quart of last summer's canned tomatoes, and I could taste the freshness in the tomato sauce. It was genuinely better than any store-bought canned tomato product.

I used to do a LOT of canning! I used to really enjoyed the process as well as the end results! It can be very time consuming, which was not a factor back then, but is now. I used to boiling bath tomatoes, jams, pickles,, etc. as well as pressure cook meats and veggies. I will confess that the pressure canner did scare me at times - LOL.

Now I dehydrate most foods I want to store long-term. While foods that are canned are recommended to have a 1-year shelf life, I've found that my properly stored dried foods are good for much longer. Drying also takes less equipment for me. I use my canning jars for storage and my dehydrator - that's it.

Good luck with whatever you choose to pursue!

I grew up helping Mom and my grandmother can almost everything we ate, most of it from our garden or fruit trees. It's what almost everybody we knew did. I canned for years, water bath and pressure cooker, with used equipment and jars, much of it given by family and friends. I loved to put up food. Now that the kids are grown and I'm working full time, helping out with my mom's care, etc, I have precious little time to either garden OR can, so unless I get a windfall of tasty stuff, I don't do it. I really miss my store of canned food, though, especially when I see how much grocery prices are going up...