If, like many people, you’re on a drive to gain a little more food self-sufficiency, you will first need to get past the look of canned meat.

I’m not talking SPAM, but home-canned meats, which make SPAM look like a culinary beauty.

The pints and quarts of canned venison on our kitchen countertop start with a white congealed layer of tallow that rises to the top. Pale, brownish-gray cubes of meat are suspended in broth.

The venture into home canning began with a new pressure cooker, a couple cases of Kerr jars, lids and recipes from the Internet. The online community of canning enthusiasts promise a low-cost cornucopia of possibilities, from meat and potatoes to mangos and tomatoes.

Despite the look of jarred meat, once removed and re-heated, it is fabulously tender and tasty.

And while it’s recommended you eat it within a few years, it can last virtually forever. There are many reports of canned meats and other foods, 100 or more years old, containing most of their nutrients and apparently still good to eat.

Canning has become a mostly lost art. I remember the rows of neatly lined jars on the shelves in our farmhouse basement — a palette of colors and textures.

The past few years a hot item at Hobby Lobby and other stores have been the decorative jars filled with realistic looking plastic fruits and vegetables — cherries, oranges, string beans and strawberries. A nostalgic replacement for days gone by.

Now the faux canned goods are being pushed aside for the real thing.

“Oh, golly, yes,” says Hilltop Hy-Vee store manger Dan Olson when asked if they’ve been selling more canning supplies.

“They just went through the roof last year, like a 75 percent increase in canning supplies and pickling things. I expect it to double this year again.”

And they’re frantically looking for a supplier for pressure cookers.

They’ve also had a run on freezer bags, storage containers, anything to freeze or store food in.

Go to the Mankato link on Craigslist.com and you’ll find dozens of people desperate for canning supplies of all kinds.

The value of Ball jar lids, it seems, rockets as the stability of jobs declines.

The New York Times reported last fall that Ball canning products sales were up 92 percent over the same month a year earlier. Both Kerr and Ball ran out of everything last year and ramped up production for this season.

With spring near, the number and size of gardens will explode.

Even the Victory Garden concept is being revived. In 1943 Eleanor Roosevelt encouraged Americans to plant “victory gardens” — a concept from WWI — to help with a food shortage and the war effort. She proceeded to dig up part of the White House grounds for a garden and 20 million Americans followed her lead.

There’s a new movement to get President Obama to plant a Recession Victory Garden on the expansive White House lawn. It’s an idea that resonates with many Americans, not just because of the recession but because of the growing concerns about food safety.

Olson, in fact, hopes to create a community garden on a football field-sized piece of grassland on the south side of Hy-Vee, pending some final approvals.

He plans to put in 8-foot by 16-foot timber gardens and provide a source of water for gardeners. Anyone could use the plots free of charge, with the caveat that they buy everything for their garden from the Hy-Vee garden center.

“It’s a large open area that’s not being used for anything else. I think it would be fun,” Olson says.

This recession is a downer, but it’s not all bad: Some jars of canned meat, a plot of vegetables, a little less processed food on the table.

If this keeps up, people might need to drag their kids out of the house to weed the garden. Bummer.



Tim Krohn is a Free Press staff writer. He can be contacted at 344-6383 or by e-mail at tkrohn@mankatofreepress.com.