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[2]Canning is the perfect solution for preppers – any preppers, not just those who are seeking a natural nutrition source.
Once you have a pressure canner (and you conquer the fear of blowing yourself up with it!) you can preserve nearly anything. By creating meals right in the jars, you can provide your family with instant tasty nutrition. You are really only limited by your imagination and your ingredients. Some foods take to canning better than others, generally because of texture issues.
I live in an area with an occasionally shaky grasp on electricity. I’ve been able to test out my preps several times since living here and our home canned meals are one of the best time investments that I have made.
This is a little section of my home-canned goods. Some of my favorite benefits is the variety that home canned meals offers in a down-grid situation. I heat with wood and a hot meal is as simple as opening a jar, pouring the contents into a pot and placing it on the woodstove for about half an hour.
I like to can meat as an alternative to the nasty canned “parts” that you can buy at the grocery store. When you can the meat, it results in a nice light broth that you can use for other purposes. I have chicken, turkey, ham and beef roast.
I can veggies from my garden as well as clearance veggies from the organic rack at the grocery store. We have green beans, pickled cauliflower and carrots. We also have several jars of Boston Baked Beans loaded with bacon. For fruits we have mandarin oranges (peeled and canned whole) apple slices, 2 kinds of apple sauce, [3] and peaches.
But my favorite canned item of all has to be “meals”. We have Autumn Garden stew [4], chili, spaghetti sauce with meatballs, Bestern Southwestern Chicken [5] soup, Great Golumpki [6] soup, Chicken Needs Noodles soup, and Splendiferous Split Pea [7] soup.
These items are very simple to prepare. If you use garden produce when possible and combine it with ingredients purchased on sale, you can have many “instant” meals prepared at a very affordable price – and the best part is, you know exactly what’s in it!!!! You are not reliant on the electrical system for your food – if the power goes out, you won’t have these items rotting in your freezer – they will be sitting there on a shelf, awaiting your mealtime. Worst case scenario, since all foods are thoroughly cooked by the pressure canning process, you can eat them at room temperature, right out of the jar.
In the event of a disaster, good healthy food is not on my list of concerns.
I’ll be sharing some post-Thanksgiving turkey techniques this week for all of those yummy leftovers!
