When it comes to food-preservation, I’ve always been challenged about timing, so I try to engineer around things that have me in (or near) the kitchen anyway. For example, it takes me about one football game to core enough apples to fill a 5 gallon stock pot. I pit sour cherries while watching tennis matches in the late spring.

The canning itself is a definite commitment, but making jams and jellies borders on meditative for me, so I welcome the escape (release).

Your observation suggests a post about how to get this stuff done inside an already busy schedule. I’ll put that together as a capper for the series on canners.

There is a bottom line: If you can make better use of your time (for example, do two hours of billable consulting), then why do the food preservation? Instead, make your kitchen garden small so you don’t have leftovers that need preservation. My other blog, Your Small Kitchen Garden focuses more on kitchen gardens from which you “eat it all during the growing season.”