Doing the math
During the summer of 2006, I canned a couple of things. In 2007, I canned a lot (we had a farm share that year and I was frequently overrun with produce). Last year, I canned nothing. This year, I plan to put up more food than ever before. Our garden will be bigger than it’s ever been (still quite tiny) and my schedule will allow for mornings free to work on this kind of stuff. And this year I’ve been increasingly frustrated with the amount of stuff we buy in cans and then recycle. I have, basically, no faith in the recycling program. Tomatoes are our biggest problem. We probably eat, on average, three cans of diced tomatoes, plus one of tomato paste, per week, every week. Which means that if I were to can all of our tomato needs, I would need 156 cans of tomatoes (or actually need half of that amount because I would can quart jars rather than pints - why are tomatoes sold in pints when I seem to need at least two for everything I make with them?). And 52 of paste? That’s crazy! I do remember though, that my grandma had a whole storage room lined with jars at the end of every harvest. There were lots of tomatoes and probably even more pickles.
Yesterday, I made mango chutney. It wasn’t the delicious chutney recipe of 2006 - where did that go? - but it was fine. Hopefully it will improve with age. The list of ingredients was really long and as I was buying stuff I worried that although I can get behind the environmental ideal of home canned stuff, I might be spending a lot of money on this. This morning I sat down to figure it all out. The jars and lids are, this time, not part of the equation because I already had them kicking around from previous canning adventures. I canned half-pint jars, which is about the amount of chutney you’d want to serve with cheese and crackers when friends come by or enough to open for a meal and snack on for a week. (I will spare you the part of the calculation where I figured out how much cider vinegar, for example, I used out of the jug - this is just the cost of the amounts of things I actually used.)
Apple cider vinegar $0.80
Mangos $5.76 (Mangos were on sale - May is their time - and this is less than half of what they are here during the rest of the year)
Raisins $3.90
Limes $0.97
Ginger $0.85
Oranges $1.27
Molasses $0.65
Garlic $0.12
Spices $0.75
Cilantro $0.75
Lemons, onions, brown sugar I already had $2.00 (that’s a guess, obviously)
The total grocery cost of making the chutney was $17.82. I made two batches to can and one (nearly full) batch to eat in the next couple of weeks. I’ve never done that before and I don’t know why: it makes so much sense and eliminates waste. Following a canning recipe means really following it - otherwise you can’t be sure if you’ve got the acidity/sugar level safe for preserving. But you’re usually canning things to use up whatever you have a lot of and it’s safer to go over the amount of some things to ensure you have enough to make the recipe. I knew here that I wanted to make a dozen half-pint jars of chutney - two batches - but I when I’d chopped up the mango, I had nearly the required amount to make another whole batch. So while I prepared the ingredients, I filled pot one with the first batch, a bowl with the second, and then another pot with whatever I had left. The last pot didn’t have to be exact because I wasn’t going to keep it past a week or two in the fridge. Therefore, it got the little bits of everything left.
I estimate (that fridge batch was a little hard to guess at amounts) that I got about 136 total ounces of chutney, so the cost per ounce was $0.13. And that works out to about $1.05 per jar.
I’m not sure how cheap you could buy mango chutney for. I found one website that sells “gourmet” chutney for $7.50 per eight-ounce jar. Considering that the chutney I made contains only fresh ingredients and no preservatives, I imagine it meets the criteria for “gourmet”. (It does not meet the criteria for organic or locally-sourced (obviously).) I will knock four dollars off that ridiculous price and guess that $3.50 a jar is not unreasonable. It might go for cheaper than even that in a grocery store, but it’s certainly going to contain lot of whacky “natural and artificial flavours” and whatnot. My cost per ounce was $0.13 versus the commercial cost per ounce of $0.43 - a savings of about $0.30 per ounce. I made 136 ounces for a total savings then of about $40.00. It took me about three or four hours to make (depending on whether one counts shopping, etc.), but that’s still a minimum hourly wage of about $10.00 an hour.
So setting aside reasons of deliciousness (which are really the best reasons anyway), it’s cheaper to make your own. It’s actually a lot cheaper.
Last night we had white fish poached in wine with cilantro and chives; basmati rice; and mango chutney. My dad made the wine, the chives were from the garden, the cilantro was leftover from the chutney making. The total cost of the meal was about $10.00, or $2.50 per plate. I’ve made dinners that were a lot cheaper - lentil stew, for example, is notoriously inexpensive - but probably not for something as fancy.
It’s probably very much worth it on the price difference to make condiments - particularly ‘specialty’ ones like chutney. For things like canned tomatoes, I expect that the worth will come less from a straight price comparison than from quality. I will go local and organic, for example, and I’ll be able to skip the copious amount of sodium.
So this year my plan is to can. I want to make another run of chutney (the even better recipe that I made before, if I can find it), strawberry jam; plain strawberry preserves; rhubarb and strawberry jam (I’ll also freeze both of those); nine-day pickles, dill pickles; beets; pears; peaches; apple sauce; blueberry jam; tomatoes; tomato sauce; ketchup; tomato paste. And I don’t know what else. Hopefully good things