Maybe it’s the economic times, maybe it’s a desire to “green” my kitchen or maybe it’s the locavore movement, but this year I got a bug to try canning. Like many of the offspring of the first generation of women to enter the workforce en masse, I never learned this age-old preservation technique at my mother’s knee. Of course there’s the Internet, but I really wanted to watch it done firsthand before endeavoring to try it on my family (that whole botulism thing is a little scary). Happily, local mom Audrey Crane agreed to provide a tutorial for myself and another mom, Tara Frazer. Fortunately for us, Audrey is a veritable font of knowledge when it comes to canning (most of it self-taught, I was impressed to learn). After a couple of hours of low intensity work, and lots of chatting, we each had three beautiful jars of canned tomatoes. Inspired and feeling brave, I went home and later that night cooked up and canned a batch of peach jam. Though it came out a little dark (there are ways to counteract this but I didn’t bother with them), it tasted delicious and was really easy. It felt surprisingly empowering to have erased the factory hundreds of miles away from the eating equation. And what a great way to illustrate for my children where food really comes from. Now that the door has been opened, I find myself giddily pondering, ”What next?”

If you’re interested in learning more about home food preservation, the La Plata County Extension Office tomorrow (Sept. 2) is starting a three-day class in the mornings. See “Going Green with Food Preservation“ on the extension office’s Web site for information on signing up.