My canning journey began not too long ago on a slow Sunday morning. After harvesting a generous Italian tomato crop in my garden and supplementing it with another 20 pounds purchased at my local farmer’s market, I blanched, peeled, and quartered them, eventually adding them to a stock pot with diced onions, peppers, garlic, and spices. After letting the sauce simmer for four to five hours, I filled quart-sized Mason jars and placed them in a water bath to preserve them for the cold months and busy nights ahead. By the end of the next day, my pantry shelves were lined with vibrant red jars that looked comforting and delicious. I was proud of myself for making the most of some fresh, seasonal produce for my family, and I was hooked.

The following week, I pulled more ripe tomatoes from my vines and returned to the farmer’s market for 20 pounds each of Roma and San Marzano tomatoes. Back in my kitchen, I made another batch of pasta sauce and one for pizza, adding more sealed jars to my pantry. It goes without saying that I need a break from peeling tomatoes at this point, but I know my canning adventures have only just begun.

The Canning Comeback

I caught the canning bug after reading Preserving with a Purpose: Next-Generation Canning Recipes & Kitchen Wisdom by Sarah Thrushcreator of @peeliesnpetals. Unlike me, Thrush has a long history of canning to preserve food; it’s in her blood. She considers herself a third-generation canner because her first memories are of canning with her grandmothers, although she has family recipes dating back to the 1800s, some of which are shared in her book. Surprisingly, writing a book about canning is never something Thrush set out to do. When she and I chatted via video at the end of the summer, she admitted the book happened by accident.

Like many others, Thrush joined TikTok during the pandemic to connect with people and quickly made ‘friends’ with other homesteaders. While saying goodbye in the comment section of a live one day, she mentioned she had apples that needed to be canned. The interest was immediate; many asked if she could show them how.

“I had 15,000 people watching me live canning apple juice,” she says. “I was completely shocked and overwhelmed, and it kind of just snowballed from there.”

It had never occurred to her that people didn’t know how to preserve food this way. Thrush started making simple tutorial videos on safely preserving fruits, vegetables, and meat via pressure canning. She gained almost a million followers in her first year and over a million in the second. It wasn’t long before they were begging for a book.

“It was very organic,” she explains. “There was an obvious need, and I was more than happy to teach people how to do what I’ve been doing my whole life.”

Preserving with a Purpose

Thrush’s book opens with a heartfelt and vulnerable introduction. In it, she talks about growing up in a micro-community called ‘the Region’ on the border of Indiana and Illinois. She describes the Region as an American melting pot of ethnic diversity with harsh winters and short growing seasons. She heard stories of Victory Gardens and understood the importance of stretching food resources, learning to make something from nothing, and using canning to preserve harvests.

“I grew up in a long line of poor people. We had never been rich, so to speak, but we always had what we needed to survive,” she tells me. “I grew up with two grandmothers who had survived the Great Depression. One of my grandmothers told a story about how she and her sisters would sit outside and eat dirt because there wasn’t any food. So I grew up with a waste not, want not mindset.”

That mindset made Thrush incredibly resilient. When she and her children later struggled with food insecurity, she fell back on the education she had received as a girl about food preservation. She began growing food again and canning it to keep her family well-fed. Thrush eventually lost her home and turned to new solutions like community gardens. She wrote Preserving with a Purpose to help people maintain their food security through challenging times, whether financial or caused by weather events or changes in the political climate. After all, she believes food security is a fundamental human right, yet too many people go hungry.

“Canning is on the rise again as the cost of food continues to rise, as people are starting to wake up from what I call their grocery store comas,” she explains. “Where does our food come from? What is in my food? Who put that food there? There are all these questions. People are starting to look at their food and say, ‘Hey, I’m disconnected from my food and my food source, and I want to be connected to that again.’”

Thrush’s book features dozens of beloved recipes (some are family heirlooms) that extend far beyond the classic jams and jellies. Think DIY Teriyaki Sauce, Cowboy Salsa, Bourbon Chicken, Corned Beef Hash, Pork Carnitas Meal-in-a-Jar, soups of all kinds, and more. The recipes aren’t fancy or expensive; they’re simple, delicious, nutritious, and, where Thrush is concerned, often sentimental.

“My great, great, great grandmother’s pickles are in there,” she says. “That recipe is the very last recipe of the book because it is so special to me. Every time that jar is opened, and I taste it, it reminds me of my childhood and being in the kitchen with my grandmothers.”

Preserving with a Purpose also includes chapters on planning your pantry and how much food you’ll need for your family, meal plans, and mastering the canning fundamentals. Thrush breaks down the science behind and the difference between water baths and pressure canning, discusses the equipment and supplies needed, and offers solutions to frequently encountered canning issues. It’s a book that suits beginners and long-time canners alike.

“I wanted to bring canning into the now – into the modern and show people that you can do this, and it doesn’t have to be jams, jellies, and pickles,” she says of her book. “Of course, there are jams, jellies, and pickles in there, so if that’s your thing, they’re there too.”

Equipment, Recipe Selection, and Dollars Saved

The USDA recommends pressure canning as the only method for safely canning low-acid foods such as vegetables, meat, poultry, fish, and seafood. Tomatoes and apples, for example, are high-acid and can be canned via pressure canning or in a simple water bath.

“If you start with water bath canning, you’ll already have 90% of what you need in your kitchen,” Thrush explains. “You need a large stock pot, some jars, and the lids will be your expense. When you get into pressure canning, you’re more involved with equipment. But those things pay for themselves quickly.”

Thrush says a pressure canner should be a one-time investment, with many families eventually passing them down from generation to generation. They range in price from a couple hundred dollars and up, depending on the make and model. However, Thrush, who has anywhere between 800 and 1,000 jars of home-canned food on her shelves after every harvest season, estimates significant savings on her grocery bills.

“We save, on average, $10,000 to $12,000 a year on groceries,” she says. “And that number keeps growing as the price of groceries rises.”

Of course, we won’t all save as much money at the supermarket. But any amount of food you can preserve from your garden, no matter its size, is a step in the right direction. If you don’t have much space, Thrush recommends renting an allotment or participating in a community garden where the rewards can be very similar. She also suggests being smart about the foods you grow and planning canning recipes around the seasonal foods you can buy affordably (and at peak nutrition) from local farmers.

“When you start making your food work for you, you start making money,” she explains. “I don’t grow any corn, garlic, or potatoes. Why? In my community, I have three farmers who do that. So I purchase from them. I won’t waste my land space doing that when I know I can get it in bulk from them. That frees up my space to do the more expensive things at home.”

Good for the Body and the Soul

If you’re new to canning, Thrush suggests starting small and simple, like with a couple of jars of fruits or fruit juices. Some people (ahem!) might go a little overboard and buy 60 pounds of Italian tomatoes at the farmer’s market their first time, but you don’t have to go to that extreme.

Canning can be done in quiet solitude in your kitchen or with your friends and family. Either way, you’re slowing things down and preserving seasonal, nutritious food, and you know exactly how it’s been prepared. Plus, seeing lines of jars on your pantry shelves brings an enormous amount of pride and, initially, some awe.

“I no longer have that awe and shock this late in my canning life,” Thrush laughs. “I’m so blind to it because it is just how we eat. But there is a real sense of accomplishment when you see all those jars on your shelf; it doesn’t matter if it’s four jars or 400 (…) There is an excellent mental health boost when canning your food because it gives you a sense of purpose and it gives you a sense of accomplishment.”

Thrush encourages everyone to discover their purpose for canning food and use that as a driving force. Mine is capitalizing on seasonal, affordable produce that is more expensive or difficult to find during cold Canadian winters. It’s about ensuring I have healthy, homemade options on those busy school nights when my kids have activities. It’s about coziness, comfort, and slow food. As I move forward on my canning journey, I’ll take a much-needed break from tomatoes for the season. Next up? Applesauce and soups.

Preserving with a Purpose: Next-Generation Canning Recipes & Kitchen Wisdom author Sarah Thrush videos can be found on YouTube.