Its Friday, you all, and if you have been a part of our community for ANY length of time, then you know that we often do Fabulously Frugal Friday posts on Fridays throughout the year!

Welcome to today’s!

I want to talk about why Canning, in any form, is a skill you should learn and if you know how to do it, why you should teach others to do it. There are many reasons we use both our water bath and pressure canner year round, but here are some of my top reasons:

  1. We dont rely nearly as much on a grocery store, which means we can cut our spending habits and grocery bill in half or more than the average family.
  2. It makes cutting out the processed foods and chemicals that affect my family in our foods out of our meals so so SO much easier. I know what goes in every jar, and I can pull together a delicious meal in a very short time. Think as in homemade Beef Stew that rocks your socks off in less than 20 minutes, and all without an electric pressure cooker.
  3.  In case of power outages, or disasters, my family ALWAYS has shelf stable, delicious food to eat.
  4. I can budget our grocery money accordingly, and over time, as you develop a strong food pantry, you spend less and less at the grocery store.
  5. I have less concern about financial challenges, or how to feed my family in the event of a job loss (as we did here a couple years ago), and that takes a load off the mind of a mamma with hungry bellies under her roof.
  6. I take advantage of sales and products where they are available, and dont ever have to worry about losing a freezer full of food (feast versus famine event).

 

This time of year, in the winter, I am busy canning up soups, meat, and basics for the pantry for the rest of year. Some of the things you can take advantage of during this time of year are meat sales, squash that is inexpensive per pound but packed full of nutrition and fiber, potatoes, making stock from leftover holiday meals (think turkey stock and chicken stock, ham broth and bone broth). I don’t know if you have ever looked at the labels on those boxes and jars of meat stock that people buy for their meals, but yuck. When you DO find a good brand, it is very expensive per ounce. Whereas making and canning your own often is pennies on the dollar for the cost of electricity, and water plus leftovers. *wink* Give me a good solid jar of home-roasted, and home-canned meat or veggie broth, and I am good to go.

Canning and learning how to use both a water bath canner and pressure canner are good skills to have. It allows you to budget a small portion of your groceries to putting things away for days you dont want to cook and need an easy meal, or to build up a stock that can protect you financially from job loss or other issues.

Here are some of the canning series I have done over the last couple years, as well as a link to my first in a series of 3 books about Preserving. This book is the WaterBath canning version and contains a large number of our family’s favorite recipes. Our pressure Canning version is almost finished and is set to launch in 2 weeks! I hope you also will find that Ebook as worthy of an investment as our many other readers have on our others!

Canning Everything But the Cat

Preserving the Basics

Blessings to you and yours,

~Heather <3