We toured an old deisel sub (in Portland Oregon) a few years ago and they told us about life aboard the boat....They had LOTS of canned food, bags of rice, potatoes......the usual staples......one thing we did find funny was that they would load the canned goods and make a floor out of them and walk on top of them. As they used them (consumed the contents) they had more (head) room to walk. But they didn't carry anything "special".

Some very valid points concerning canning and/or the preservation of food has been raised in earlier responses to the original post. I grew up in a time when everyone, well – everyone I knew – canned food. They put up veggies and made pickles and kraut. It was such a common household practice that contests were held at the local county fair on the items which were canned. Probably still are in some parts of the USA today. There was a smattering of sausage makers who smoked their own (back when that phrase meant exactly that). Just last weekend my wife and I put up 50 pints of strawberry jam. Blackberrys will be ripening soon and we are eager to find a supply of green (i.e., not ripe) sand pears to put up another years supply of pear relish. But putting up meat just scares the bejeebers out of me.

So I did a little Google search on all the words “canning preservation mormon” which returned approx 12,700 hits in English. I have known for years that the Mormons have a recommended practice of having a quantity of food stored for emergencies and hard times. I have also read news articles about the canneries in their churches for the benefit of the members. Two links I found interesting are:

www.survival-center.com/foodfaq/ff17-equ.htm

http://athagan.members.atlantic.net/PFSFAQ/PFSFAQ-7.html

The first link is very simple. The second link is a resource listing regarding food stock preservation. Perhaps everything and more than you ever wanted to know about canning and food preservation can be found here. On of these links is to a site for Ball (an old name in home canning products). It speaks directly of why low acid foods, such as meats must be prepared using the water bath pressure cooker method. It is an interesting read. After reading the info, I think I will just buy commercially canned meats.

good information. thanks for the links. didn' t know mormons encouraged planning for crisis (food wise). very informative.

Just want to reiterate, if you are canning a low acid food( just about anything except tomatoes I think) YOU MUST USE A PRESSURE CANNER! As someone said before 212deg will kill anything EXCEPT botulism which will kill you. Also a pressure canner and cooker are two different beasts, I think one is just larger though. If you are really intrested some areas have clubs/facilites to can stuff, call your cooperative extension they will likely know.