Home Canning

Here is a starter's guide to home canning and home canning recipes.

In our home, preserving food happens in two ways: freezing and canning. We can or freeze our surplus vegetable garden produce as well as buy in bulk vegetables and fruits in season and either can or freeze them too.

Canning is such a huge topic that this article just touches on how to get yourself going with home canning.

There are also a few resources that we could not do without; these are on the canning supplies page.

I need to offer a sincere and heartfelt thank you to Sharon from for her wonderful website and very helpful tutorials.

There was only one reason that I started canning: continuing education around self reliance. Big words, but simply I wanted to learn a new skill related to my home and as we were having surplus vegetables from my garden I was encouraged to save some of them for later.

From this grew the buying what we cannot grow, in particular, fruit, and I began to can those items.

As I watched my little stockpile of home canned items grow it inspired me to try new recipes and ideas.

So now we have learned to can:
Tomatoes
Green Beans
Peaches
Hot Peppers
Pickles
Corn
Apples
Pears
Lemon Curd
Chutney
Jams and more.

Part of canning is making sure you have the right equipment on hand (see the side margins), and these we bought in over a period of time as it is very costly to do it in one shoot!

Home canning is a wonderful way to simplify your life and get in touch with the food you eat. Instead of opening a generic bottle or can, you know that you have prepared the food from the ground to plate. What a reward!

Other helpful pages related to stockpiling food:
Pantry food list
Stockpiling groceries
Setting up a vegetable garden