I had no idea that you could can food at home until I was in my mid-twenties. I knew what a mason jar was, I thought it was something you put old screws in or use for a drinking glass when all the other dishes are dirty. I knew there were cans of soup and vegetables at the store but for some reason, I thought heavy machinery was needed to actually preserve food at home. Our preferred method of food preservation was freezing, which meant taking whatever we wanted, throwing it in a plastic bag, putting it in the freezer, then throwing it away the next year to make more room for frozen things, that would again, be thrown away.
After doing some reading on the subject of canning I have learned that it is decidedly a Southern thing. As much as I like to think I am this born and bred emissary of Southern lore and culture I have to admit that even in my own household I am not the premiere expert. Through some twist of fate, I married a woman that grew up in Michigan but actually had more of a southern upbringing than I did.
My Mom is from the south but lived in the north a good bit of her childhood, my Dad is from Ohio so we missed out on a lot of the ‘true’ Southern stuff like sweet tea and fried foods, but also canning, as I found out. My wife, on the other hand, grew up in Michigan with two parents from rural North Carolina, so her upbringing was quite different than mine. Where my meals usually consisted of a bunless hotdog and carrot sticks as I stared at cotton fields, she was sitting down to a meal of fried chicken, collards, lima beans, and cornbread looking out the window at 6 feet of snow.
The first time that I spent the night at my in-laws house in Michigan I had to sleep in their basement. We were not married at the time, and those were the rules. Their house is large with a certain formal feeling to it. To mess with me, my wife told me that the closet in the basement room I was sleeping in was a shrine to her deceased Grandfather. I’m not one to let that kind of stuff get to me but in an unfamiliar place with people I barely knew, I spent the entire night wondering what was behind that door. Were there candles burning in front of an urn or weird relics and trinkets? Was whatever was behind that door going to come out and get me?
In the morning my wife asked me why I was so tired so I told her I didn’t like sleeping in a room that was an enteral resting place for a beloved family member. She laughed and we went to the basement and she opened the ominous closet door. It turned out I had been sleeping in a room that was an enteral resting place...for vegetables.
Packed from ceiling to floor were jars of everything from beets to vegetable soup. Peaches, pickles, pickled peaches, beans, apples, applesauce, apple butter. Entire decades worth of food packed into jars. And lucky for me no burning candles or human relics. I picked up one jar of peaches that was dated twelve years earlier. In my mind, there was no way that food could last for twelve years by a non-industrial process. My Mother-in-law insisted it would be fine and opened the jar. I didn’t want to eat it but best not upset your future in-laws. Then a southern boy stood in northern Michigan eating 12-year-old peaches that were as sweet and tender as the day they fell off the tree.
Since then we get a shipment ever year from the in-laws of canned fruits and vegetables. By and large, they have been the only fruits our son has eaten, aside from fresh, since he came into this world. At some point I should learn how to can stuff myself. Until then, I really enjoy drinking from the jars when all of our dishes are dirty and I’m busy putting food I’ll never eat in my freezer.