Jammin' Endeavours

One of my summer activities that is frugal and happens to be relatively green is canning. I tend to mostly make jam, but I've also made my own applesauce, conserve, syrup and chutney, all properly heat-treated and shelf-stable.

There are few ingredients to these things, and most of them are fairly thrifty and sustainable. Many of them I got from my own yard or local farms.

What I actually bought:

• 1 dozen half-pint jars (~$9, reusable!)
• Extra Lids ($3, reusable, but not for heat treating.)
• Extra Rings and Lids ($7, reusable! Until they rust.)
• 11 lbs Strawberries from Boxx Berry Farms (~$1.5/lb)
• 11 lbs raspberries from Bjornstad Farms (~$1.35/lb)
• 2 10 lb. bags of white sugar (~$8)
• 3 lemons ($3)
• 2 oranges (~$2)
• Walnuts and raisins(??)

What I did not buy:

• Several pounds of transparent apples.
• 5 lbs Italian plums
• Lots and lots of blackberries
• A big bundle of spearmint.
• More than a dozen pint/pint 1/2 jars, found on the side of the road during student moving season. =)

The results?

This doesn't include the half-dozen jars I've already given away or eaten.

• 4 pint and a half  jars of completely natural, local applesauce.
• Three pint jars of plum conserve
• Several half-pint jars each of strawberry jam, strawberry-raspberry jam, raspberry-orange jam, and lightly seeded blackberry jam.
• Two jars of mint syrup (which later needed to be watered down and made about 5 pints of syrup.)

 All made without artificial flavors or pectin, with the important ingredients coming from a 25-mile radius from my house. They make great gifts and keep so well that I'm eating though a couple of years worth of jam, and the jars can be reused for more jam, for leftovers, for random storage items. I use my leftover jars as portable coffee cups, yogurt parfait containers, as a pill container and as a toothbrush holder. until I need them for canning again.

So, in conclusion, canning your own food can be thrifty (after an investment in supplies) it encourages local shopping and saves the transportation cost of whatever kinds of foods you would normally buy at the grocery store. And you end up with a taste of summer when you crack open that jar of raspberry jam in the dead of winter.