who don't live in cities don't have to pay $16 for 2 pints of strawberries. So canning is not nearly the luxury that it is for urban dwellers.

I think we should all try to avoid wasting food -- by canning, freezing, and composting whenever possible. Certainly your article presents canning as a trend, but for those of us who have the land, kitchen/freezer space, and the access to produce, whether we grow it or buy it from the coop or farm stand down the road, it's worth learning the skills our parents and grandparents once possessed that became lost in our craze for convenience foods (whether we're talking McDonald's, Chinese takeout, or Whole Foods prepared meals).

I've ordered a $50 "winter preservation box" from our local veg delivery service, in the hope that my visiting father will teach me how to make pickles, relish, and jam. Not only will it be good to understand the process to avoid future waste; it's an enjoyable way to spend the time, and a way to connect. Should I be lucky enough to get that bumper crop of tomatoes and cucumbers later this summer, perhaps they can be saved to enjoy this winter.

I love it that so many comments are really sort of derisive toward the idea of canning, yet the same commenters are all drooling over the prospect of acquiring some fresh wild blueberry jam.

I grow hot peppers (jalepeno, serrano, habenero, cayenne, and a few others) in my yard in Florida. Because I have such a long growing season here, I can get two full crops from March - October. I've made salsa, hot sauce, and countless other things until I stumbled upon hot pepper jam. This is very popular in the Southeast and I cannot keep enough jars in stock. When I make a batch, my friends snatch up all of my jelly supplies and hoard a jar until I give them another one.

My latest creations have involved mixing hot peppers and fruit. Blueberries go great with habeneros and mangoes are awesome with cayenne peppers. All of the above are grown organically in my yard.

I think there's a market for home-grown organic gourmet jams and jellies and am thinking of launching a business out of my kitchen (eventually having to find a commercial kitchen space and ways to automate the canning process, of course).

But yeah, a one-time project? That probably would be an expensive waste of time. However, as your volume increases, your costs decrease. And, next time there's a hurricane and all my neighbors have run out of boxed and commercially canned goods... I will have a phat stock of fresh organic foods in my pantry to eat from.

Your mileage may vary.

Oh, and to the guy who was all super critical about canning jelly with all that evil white sugar: Get a grip, fella! Nobody eats an entire pint of jelly in one sitting. At most, people use a tablespoon or two on their toast in the morning. What are you, the sugar police? STFU. If you don't like preserves, don't eat them, but why take the time to post about how awful it is that other people are interested? Controlling much?

Not many people have mentioned it, but the best way to make fruit jams is to use low sugar pectin. Depending on the fruit, you use anywhere from 50 to 75 percent less sugar per batch of jam, think 6 cups of sugar instead of 15 for 8 cups of crushed strawberries. The best part about using low sugar pectin is that the fruit flavor is practically doubled, which is especially great for milder fruits like peaches and apricots. We grow our own fruit and berries in a pretty cold northern climate, the jams and pickles I make are cheaper than store bought and much much cheaper than store bought artisan foods.

My favorite frugal food preservation is drying herbs, I just put up $100 or more dollars worth of dried dill if you buy the little jars of Spice Island stuff…and mine actually has flavor. The trick for drying herbs is a food dryer with cool settings and drying them on the stem. After they are dried, don’t break the leaves off the stem, just gently pack them into jars and crush what you need between your fingers when you are cooking. By leaving them on the stem you preserve the delicate flavors from their essential oils. Many upscale snooty food stores are selling herbs that are dried on the stem, and the difference is really incredible.

I had to grit my teeth to get past the first paragraph (small batch Kentucky bourbon?!?! - my Grandmother Channer, champion canner, is twitching and rolling over in her Iowa grave), and when I did, I still kept rolling my eyes.

From a litanty of "PUH-leeze" reactions, I humbly offer salon.com readers these two:

1) Having a child prevents modern folks from canning? Having a child (or a needy cat? huh?) means you don't have the luxury of time? I was only a grandkid, and from the age of 5 or 6 I was on a stool by the stove, stirring - or out in the back yard, cleaning pickle jars by the dozen with the garden hose - many a summer.

How in the world do modern parents expect their kids to learn adult skills? Letting them marinate in the cathode rays of the latest ultra-violent video game, and hauling them to weekly over-supervised soccer practice isn't going to teach kids to do the laundry, bake bread, sew on a collar button, do their taxes, pay bills, or change a tire. And keeping them out of the kitchen just ensures that you'll force them to be reliant, as adults, on the fast and factory and junk foods you probably rail against. Just a thought.

2) Duh, of course canning - and bread making, and many other things - are obsolete as penny pinching measures. We live in an age of mighty agribusinesses and amidst a monolithic factory food culture. ConAgra and their ilk can produce food for nrealy nothing, and distribute it via vast shipping networks to discount retailers like WalMart and Safeway. Canning your own twee, yuppercrust jams and jellies doesn't change this. Why in the world would anyone think it would?