I was flipping through some ads from the Sunday paper today when one caught my eye. It was an ad for Ball, the canning supply maker. That’s a company you don’t see very often these days.
It turns out that Ball is trying to appeal to a new generation of Americans. The ad focuses on two things. The first is their Ball Canning Discovery Kit, complete with a plastic basket for immersing the finished product in hot water, three canning jars, and an instruction/recipe book. The other is a completed jar of what appears to be spaghetti sauce surrounded by fresh ingredients.
Out of focus in the background is a young couple, casually dressed, cooking something together. We assume it’s the sauce. The message is fairly clear: forget grandma and her pantry full of peach preserves. For the new, hip generation, canning is all about preserving your handmade culinary masterpieces. Canning is sexy. Canning is clean and simple (the couple are both wearing spotless white shirts, which means they can’t have come near any sauce, and in a clean, featureless, airy kitchen). It’s a shared experience.
In spite of my usual cynicism toward advertising and products trying to re-image themselves, I have to give them a thumbs up. Canning is in danger of becoming a lost art, and if someone doesn’t find a way to get the younger generations interested again it will disappear with the last of Aunt Eleanor’s peaches.
What I do find interesting about the ad, however, is that thrift is in no way addressed as a motivator. With only 44 words (only a little too long for a tweet), they don’t have much time for unnecessary words. They hit such keywords as easy, simple, fresh, new, variety, delicious, and discovery. Not a single word I would normally associate with the canning I was involved in as a child (okay, maybe delicious). Not a single reference to any old ways of doing things. It’s almost like canning hasn’t existed for over two centuries as a means of storing food.
No, it’s like canning has sprung unbidden from the farmer’s market as a trendy new concept in epicureanism. It’s not old, dusty bottles of peaches and jams anymore. It’s fresh primavera sauce in single-meal bottles–a recipe no doubt easy to make, yet impressive nonetheless, and not likely to change its nature in the heat-sealing process.
I hope they succeed, in any case. They’re working on it. Also included in the ad is a coupon for two dollars off their “Discovery Kit”, and $1.50 off a case of jars. Hopefully all the trendy young couples out there who try this kit don’t get discouraged when the sauce splatters on their clean white shirts. While canning is a great way to preserve food, and it can be fun, I’ve yet to have an experience that wasn’t at least a little messy.
In any case, if you would rather dive right in instead of sticking a toe in the water, I recommend my good friend Tonya’s site, Country Home Canning. She’s got the recipes, techniques, and equipment for those who want to get serious about canning.