That is all. Although I do want to see pieces of MJ's corpse sliced off and pickled as holy relics.

Making jam and pickled veggies is very, very economical, if you make it from what's cheap, plentiful, local, and in season. Every summer I make jam from the wild raspberries that grow in my neighborhood and from the wild blueberries that grow near the cabin I visit. Both of these are free, so the only cost is sugar and pectin. I re-use jars, and save jars that were bought for other purposes, so I only have to replace lids. This year I belong to a CSA, so when I got more tart cherries than I could use in a week, I made jam; same with the mint. Homemade jam also makes great gifts. People have been known to eat an entire jar of my wild raspberry jam with a spoon in a single sitting. I also trade it for honey produced by a neighbor who keeps bees.

Buy vegetables toward the end of the season when farmers have more than they can unload quickly. Last year we got a large crate of cucumbers for $3 from a roadside stand, and a peck of beets for only $4. These two purchases made enough pickles, pickle relish and pickled beets to provide for two families for the rest of the year (although my daughter can eat a whole jar of pickled beets by herself; they are REALLY good). I also put up canned tomatoes every year, again waiting until near then end of the season when everything is discounted. One local stand sells "seconds" (slightly misshapen tomatoes) by the bushel. These are great for canning.

Regarding refrigeration, don't get me wrong, it's great, but there is an awful lot more room in the pantry than the freezer, and the pantry uses much less energy.

My mom and grandma and great aunts canned stuff. I don't. I don't see the point -- I do not have a large family and I have a freezer. Most stuff freezes better or as well as canning, and with (as HughAnderson pointed out, rather over-excessively) less sugar. Honestly, how much JAM do you eat during a year? (Though I'd give my eye teeth for a jar of that wild blueberry stuff, LOL.) I'd say that I go through maybe 2-3 jars of Smuckers each YEAR; canning would be insanely wasteful.

When I bought my home in 1986, there were canned goods in the basement under the stairs, in a sort of dry pantry. Some dated back to the 1940s! Perfect for some botulism, if you were a terrorist; the stuff was black and slimy. It was sort of fascinating though. God help the landfill it ended up in. I also inherited a ton of glass jars (but no lids or seals).

I know enough about canning to know A. it is hard work (and HOT as some have noted) and B. you have some significant start up costs. You can gather stuff if you work at it (yard sales, etc.) but if you buy NEW, as Ms. Karnasiewicz has apparently done, it IS costly and probably makes no sense. You also need deep pots or a pressure cooker, and you need some tongs. The lids get lost or bent and the seals wear out; these need to be replaced or bought new.

And GREENMARKET? I am happy not to know what that is, since it sounds like your typical urban/WholeFoods/rip-off. If you want to can, you need to either grow stuff, or go to where people grow stuff (the country!) OR find an urban food market that is cheap and caters to ethnic groups. If you do that, instead of chi-chi overpriced organic fruit, you will find whatever is in season, when it is in season and in massive quantities. But only for a couple weeks -- in Ohio, we get totally amazing fresh local strawberries, the best I have ever tasted anywhere, but ONLY for about two weeks in early June. Then forget it for the rest of the year.

Canning also lets you buy imperfect stuff in massive cheap quantity -- like slightly bruised tomatoes -- and turn them into very edible canned tomatoes or spaghetti sauce. Imperfect fruits and veggies can be had at most farmers markets, at the end of the day, for almost nothing.

However -- once again -- if you are an average person, or small family, you will never ever eat enough to make this worthwhile. And though canned stuff lasts a long time, it does not (see example above) last FOREVER. You can get really really sick on improperly canned food -- I mean, like die of botulism or suffer serious illness, from ONE SINGLE BITE. (This never can happen with frozen stuff, BTW, your worst problem is freezer burn.)

Back to the pickles: after doing a lot of canning, and figuring out the impracticality part, my mom and female relatives decided to simplify and ONLY can Kosher Dill Pickles. And they did this for many, many years...providing us with the most exquisite dill pickles imaginable, in vast quantity in our basement. Occasionally, we'd hear a loud explosion and it was one of the jars bursting; a sad thing, but it happens. We ate a lot of pickles. We never gave any as presents (too precious).

Then, sometimes in the middle 70s, my mother discovered Don Herman Pickles of Galion, Ohio. She ate one and announced her pickle canning days were OVER, because those pickles were every bit as good as her own. And that was that. I was in college at the time, and my canning skills were those of a neophyte; my mom's decision nipped any further skills in the bud.

So, yes it is good, but no, there is no point to doing it, except for that rare batch of wild blueberries. It CAN be economical, but not if like Sarah Karnasiewicz, you go to the priciest urban hipster rip-off market. And I am not at all sure it will help you with "Peak Oil", because canning consumes a fair amount of supplies and uses quite a bit of energy. And it is hot and time-consuming, and all in the hottest months of July and August.

But whatever. I don't really want a pair of scratchy socks hand-knitted from $70 a skein mohair, either. If it makes you happy, go ahead and do it.

And if you are canning any wild blueberries, save me a jar. :-)