Well, is it?

Not exactly.

You see, if we haven’t discussed this before, my grandmother was a city gal, born to country parents. She’s from Detroit Michigan, and her parent came from Kentucky, and Georgia. They raised 5 kids in the city during the depression. Interesting stories were told to me, like eating pigeons if necessary.

Um, yeah, won’t be doing that anytime soon.

My grandfather was a country farm boy raised in Georgia on a farm of 16 siblings.

You see where I get my frugal, money saving ways from? LOL.

They had no choice in those days. I learned the craft of sewing, money management, time management, and cooking/baking from them and my mom. One thing got from my mom and great grandmother was canning. I remember my great grandmother having a garden of fruits and veggie in her yard. Yeah she was city gardening before it was trendy. Of course you hear Detroit, and you think of the images of the city just looking crazy. In the late 80s and 90s, it wasn’t as bad, but could be dangerous. I would say that, and saving money was the reason for her garden of fruits and veggies, and its what she knew.

I vaguely remember her doing this process, but my mom, for a while there, did this process when I was a kid. It’s not expensive, unlike the myth that it is. You will spend money getting started, but its one time purchases. As I said on the facebook page, right at this moment, I’m reading on the process, and what I may need. In that I read so far, it’s not much, or hard. It’s just time consuming.

According to my reading, and looking at my space, here’s what I need, and what you’ll need if you want to try:

-A big pot to boil the jars in. Walmart has a canning kit I can buy, but according to Ball(huge canning brand), I can use a big pot, like he same size to boil greens or potatoes in. It’s about the size of 10 gallons, which I have. If I really get into it, I may buy another one, but we shall see how this goes first.

-Obviously the jars. Now, funny thing is I have to buy them for the homemade vodka project I did, and secretly, I love the look of mason jars. I’ll probably get 3-4 cases, since we are talking jams, fruits, and the flavored vodka.

-Fruit! Now, you guys know, I buy fruit in mass amounts, so again this shouldn’t be a problem either. Berries, grapes, peaches, pears, and apples.

-Storage. Now, this will be the challenge of it all. I tink this would be easy is I had a house but since I’m in a townhome, I’ll be looking to see where exactly I can store these jars, used and unused. I’m thinking of the shelves you can get for your garage, and making an area in my dining area since I plan to change that around as well. Who knows, I’ll keep you posted.

We have the supplies.

I found the directions on canning.

Looking at maybe one time cost of 100-120 dollars to start.

On to looking up recipes of the foods I’m aiming for.

We are doing this peeps! We are canning and saving money on food. I’m excited, and ready to tackle this. If I can do it, you can too. I think the time right after homework, I can really get into this. I’m aiming for doing this while the kids are gone out the house. There’s the time management I’m talking about. The money management is saving 150/month and making flavors I choose, instead of paying extra for things.

Now, your probably wondering how I’m pulling this off. Go back to the beginning. Remember my organized shopping. Answered that.

Watch out for next week, I’ll be posting a walk through of this process, to show you how to do it, and see if it’s as simple as people say it is.

~CSM~