Yes you can: Preserving fruits and vegetables is easy

CANNING ISN'T just for grandma anymore.

Long associated with life on the farm, preserving, or "putting up" tomatoes, peach jam and dill pickles, was as foreign to city folk as mowing the back 40 and milking the cows. Unless your family had some kind of connection to the land, the notion of canning just never came up.

Times have changed.

Thanks to a foodie zeitgeist stoked by creative chefs, urban farmers and a crackerjack blogging community, canning is all the rage. From her apartment on the 20th floor of a Center City high-rise, Marisa McClellan is one of the bloggers leading the charge. McClellan is a writer and Web producer whose latest project is working on Philly Homegrown (food.visitphilly.com), a Web site dedicated to the region's bounty of local flavor. She started foodinjars.com last year, one of the earliest blogs devoted to the homey art of canning.

McClellan grew up in Portland, Ore., with a mother who gardened and canned. When she moved to Philly a few years ago to take care of her grandmother, she rediscovered the joy of canning.

"Most of us don't live in a rural setting. We don't need to can to survive the winter," said McClellan, who recently signed a contract to write a book based on her blog. "But there's been a perfect storm - an appreciation for sustainable local ingredients and wanting to eat high-quality food. People are concerned that what they're eating, and what they're feeding their families, is natural, chemical-free. The best way to be really sure is to make it yourself."

Making it yourself involves using old-fashioned Mason canning jars. Jarden Home Brands (JHB) a primary manufacturer of these jars, saw sales jump 30 percent last year, and that spike has continued, with sales up another 10 percent to date this year.

McClellan, who offers in-home private canning lessons, as well as classes at Terrain at Styer's in Media (Sept. 16 she'll be demonstrating pickles), said that starting with a small batch is the easiest way to get over a fear of canning. "It doesn't have to be a huge production. You can really just buy five or six pounds of fruit at the farmer's market and come home and can."