The Truth About Canning

Tonight I made apple sauce from 16lbs of Cortland apples that I bought nearly a month ago.  I had planned to can them in slices, but they were a bit too soft for that.  Thanks to my friend Chris, who kept me so well  entertained on the phone that I didn’t notice the time fly, I managed to peel and chop them all and get them into a pot at long last.  I still have another bag of fresh apples that I hope to can in slices, perhaps tomorrow when my friend Renata comes over for a visit.  This type of work is much more enjoyable with company to help pass the time!    

My winter pantry now contains canned peaches, pears, two kinds of pickles, pickled beets and apple sauce.  I still have a variety of jams, jellies and sauces left over from last season, and a freezer full of blueberries, strawberries and rhubarb.  As we make our own bread and have this fabulous influx of fresh produce from the CSA, the only thing I need to buy anymore is dairy products, and occasionally some meat.  Even then, I have a freezer full of venison and organic beef, not all of which will be fed to the dogs!

As I’ve mentioned, last year I spent a lot of time chopping and blanching veggies for my freezer, very little of which I actually used.  This year I decided to can fruit, and pickle things instead, as that is what I ended up eating last winter.  I thought canning would also reduce my freezer – and thus electricity needs – and be more environmentally friendly.  I’m happy to have all this fruit, but I’m having second thoughts on the eco-friendliness of it all.

The amount of electricity I have used to produce each batch of canning is considerable.  First I have to boil the syrup, then I have to boil the fruit in the syrup.  The lids are heated prior to use, and the jars baked in the oven for at least 20 minutes. Once assembled, everything is submerged in a huge vat of water that takes 20-30 minutes to get to the boiling point to begin with, and then must be boiled for another 20+ minutes.  I suppose this would have all been done over a fire in the good ‘ol days, but perhaps also they weren’t so fussed about sterilization.

The other thing I have been struggling with around canning is trying to avoid non-local inputs, such as sugar, pectin and spices. Surely, I thought when first learning to can, the pioneers didn’t use all this sugar.  So what did they use instead?  Honey?  Maple syrup?  I searched and searched and, to this day, have not found recipes for making jams and such that don’t involve the addition of sugar and pectin (which comes from the seeds of citrus fruit).  How can you be a locavore if you need to use sugar and citrus fruit to preserve your food?  This bothered me for my entire first year as a locavore, as I tentatively ate my ‘fruit-only’ or fruit-and-honey, boiled into oblivion to thicken, not-quite-right tasting jams.  

I recently found the answer to this question in a fascinating book I am reading called Kitchen Literacy: How we lost knowledge of where food comes from and why we need to get it back.  Reading this book, and other sources as well, made it clear to me that strictly ‘locavore’ eating has not existed in British culinary heritage for nearly one thousand years!  No wonder I’ve been having trouble finding local-only recipes, even in books from the 1800s.  Certainly the peasants ate locally, but our food heritage comes from the upper classes, and they have used imported spices since the 1100’s, and sugar played such an integral role to the British empire for so long that it is all but impossible to divorce it from our cuisine.  Canning, it seems, evolved around the availability of sugar and spices, both imported for centuries.  There’s nothing local about it.

I find this all quite fascinating for a number of reasons, and particularly around attempts at building local, sustainable food systems.  Our food system has been globalized for so long that I don’t know if we can ever reverse it, if indeed that is what is desirable.  But that is another discussion.

Si it seems that my attempt at being more ecologically friendly through canning local foods is mediocre at best (not that this will stop me from eating it all!).  To really be both local and environmental, I would need to learn traditional ways of the first nations tribes of the region.  I believe fermenting food (i.e. sauerkraut etc.) would fit this goal as well.  I have a book explaining some of these options, and perhaps I’ll give some of them a try next year.