Modern-Day Canning — BLACKBLOODS

In the winter of 2018, the likelihood of perishing from lack of sustenance because you failed to complete your canning is exceedingly remote. When things get dire, a man or woman can always order some Grubhub.

Still, even if household food preservation is no longer a matter of life or death for most of us, I like making pickles, then stuffing them into jars, and this particular hobby of mine recently led to a nice piece, "Modern-Day Canning," published in Gardenista.

I cooked and canned with Lonny founder and former Domino editor in chief Michelle Adams while my wife, Marta Xochilt Perez, took the photos.

“In the old days, when self-reliance wasn’t a lifestyle choice, a man or woman made pickles because he or she wasn’t interested in starving through the winter.” — Me, quoted in ”Modern-Day Canning: Everything You Need to Know, Step by Step”

Though it can be a hassle, I am fond of preserving food for the same reasons that I do certain other things (hunting, fishing, camping, cooking over an actual fire) that may seem anachronistic or unnecessary: the mere process of completing the inconvenient task allows me to inhabit the mostly disappeared realities of our ancestors by taking a few hours to ponder what it must have been like, if we're talking pickles, to be Great-Great-Grandad and Great-Great-Grandma as they tried to save an entire harvest, a full year’s work, from going to waste by scrubbing, peeling, chopping, blanching, boiling, and canning.

See the complete article, "Modern-Day Canning: Everything You Need to Know, Step by Step," on Gardenista.com.