You can preserve the very best foods for your family (even if you can’t grow them)!

Have you ever seen a shelf lined with jars of beautifully hued fruits and vegetables? Have you ever wanted to walk into your pantry and pull down a jar of home-preserved food for dinner? If you have ever dreamed of pantry shelves filled with home-canned goodies to nourish your family, but don’t have to knowledge, space, or time to grow them, I’m here to tell you that you can have your veggies and eat them, too. And you don’t have to grow them all yourself!

Too Many Tomatoes (to Preserve)

Do you know how many cooked tomatoes it takes to fill a quart-size mason jar? 9! So in order to fill a canner like this or this that can fit 7 quarts you would need 63 tomatoes! That’s only 7(ish) meals depending on what you are making. That’s a lot of tomatoes and a lot of tomato plants. I’m not saying it’s impossible, but if you want to fill your pantry with wholesome, home-preserved foods, you don’t have to wait until you can grow all the food yourself. Start now!

Last week I went to a local farm and bought 75 pounds of tomatoes to put up on my shelf. The tomatoes were locally grown and tasted way better than anything I could buy at the store AND my money went to a local family rather than a big box store. It took me about 6 hours of interrupted time to get the bulk of the tomatoes processed. Then I dehydrated the skins to make tomato powder and cooked down the extra juice and pulp to make tomato paste. Both of those were pretty hands-off but took a couple of days time to complete.

YOU DON’T HAVE TO GROW IT TO PRESERVE IT!

It might be a little overwhelming to figure out how to process 50-75 pounds of tomatoes as they are coming off the vines if you have never processed tomatoes before. A great way to prepare for such a bountiful harvest is to learn the skills required to preserve the food now. You can practice on a large quantity or with a single batch.

Go out and support a local farmer. Purchase tomatoes by the case. If your farmer or co-op offers cull tomatoes, they are usually a little bit cheaper and they will work perfectly for your diced, crushed, or stewed tomatoes or tomato sauce. How many times can I say tomato in this post? Goodness!

This of course applies to anything you want to can. Green beans, potatoes, corn, carrots, beets, pickles, greens, jams, jellies, juices, and so on.

What if you don’t want to can? Can you preserve food in other ways?

So, what about dehydrating? Did you know you don’t need a dehydrator to dehydrate? Go figure! You can dry things like herbs and potatoes, and even meats in your oven on the lowest temperature setting. I used the oven to finish off my tomato paste and it worked great! Every little bit counts when you are filling your pantry.

You aren’t interested in the time required to dehydrate? You can also use the freezer! This is probably the easiest, and most common, method of food preservation because most foods don’t require any prep before putting them in the freezer. The one negative to freezing is that you are completely relying on electricity to keep your food safe. If you experience a power outage for an extended period of time, you lose your food storage. I am currently working on canning meat from the freezer to prevent such a loss and try to use the freezer as a short-term storage solution between preservation projects.

What now?

As time goes on, we will explore the benefits of each of these methods of preservation. For now, pick a food item you want to start preserving and just do it! Whether it’s making butter, refrigerator pickles, or canning a few jars of ground beef for a ready-to-go meal, you don’t want to wait until you are bringing in armloads of veggies from your garden, or picking up half a cow from your local farmer, to learn how to preserve them, start learning in small batches and you will fill your pantry in no time!

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