The harvest is over and winter nears. With every harvest season comes the decision of what to do with all the extra food. Since fruit and vegetables are perishable, most are ready and ripen at the same time. Many times, my family and I  just cannot eat all the food we grew or bought before it gets old or overripe. So we had to decide what we would do with the 'extra' before it goes bad.

Many times, we give a lot of our home grown fruit or veggies to family, friends and neighbors. But in doing so, we often find ourselves having to buy these same foods in the grocery store a month or so later. Sounds sorta counterproductive, right? So THIS year, we decided to learn ways to store our food using time tested, old fashioned methods like canning. This way, we can enjoy the same nutritious food we labored to grow all year round! With the technology available today, there shouldn't be any reason why we couldn’t save and preserve our food so that it would last for a longer period of time.

Food Preservation: What Is It?

Food preservation is the process of treating and handling food in a way that preserves its edibility and nutrition value. The main effort is to stop or greatly slow down spoilage to prevent food borne illness. You can prolonging your foods' life by such means as canning, freezing, drying and dehydrating. You get more healthy, nutritious food and lighten your grocery bill.

This year I had the privilege of learning the most traditional way of preserving food, canning. This is done by heating up both jars and produce to kill germs and sealing the produce in the jars. I have always been a little terrified by this method, but it is one I have watched my mother and grandmother use year after year. I finally asked my mother to teach me and we spent a full day making jelly and canning tomatoes. It is not only a great way to preserve food, but I really enjoyed spending the day learning and in the company of my mother and grandmother. I find it is always a bonding experience when we are in the kitchen working together. When it was all said and done I ended up with about 16 jars of jelly and double that in canned tomatoes, it was well worth the effort.

Another method I use quite often is freezing. Because it is so easy I use this method often and I don’t only use it for our garden produce, but for anything that I want to keep from going bad. I freeze leftover dinners in lunch sized portions for another day’s quick lunch. If I have leftover waffles or pancakes I freeze them in a freezer bag and when my kids need a quick breakfast I can pull one out and pop it into the toaster (it definitely beat’s buying frozen waffles.) I freeze fruit and veggies that I have bought from the store and we haven’t gotten to eating them before they might go bad.

This year I froze fresh green beans from our garden by washing and trimming them and then putting them in a freezer bag. As well as tomatoes from our garden I blanched, pealed and also put in freezer bags to be used when a recipe calls for canned tomatoes. A staple in our freezer we preserve each year is New Mexico green chili and by roasting it first and then freezing it we have this to use little by little until the next green chili season. From our garden I also froze spinach, basil, peas, raspberries, apricots and plums. Freezing makes all these foods available when I need them and keeps them in their most natural state.

The second most used method by me, and the most ancient method of preserving is drying or dehydrating to store the food and use for a later date. We have a small dehydrator and it comes in handy throughout the year. We often buy produce in season for a good price so sometimes I like to stock up and if we cannot eat everything I will pull out the dehydrator and dry the remaining food. We like to dehydrate bananas, mangos, pineapple, apples, pears, grapes, and even tomatoes. My kids love eating dehydrated fruit and often it is as sweet as candy, but without any sugar which is an added bonus for me.

By stretching our food supply and not wasting we also stretch our family budget and save money. We get to enjoy healthy food throughout the year and often have many different types of food available when we need them. Preserving food is an old method and one that more people today should consider. It might seem time consuming, but in reality it can save time by eliminating a trip to the store. It also gives me a good conscience that my family is not wasting something as precious as food, what we all need for basic survival.