The Fall and Food Preservation
This is the third post on the subject of Creation Care, one of the five spheres of a Christian ethic of eating.
Last night as I was ladling the oozing remnants of twenty five pounds of apples into just sterilized quart jars I got to thinking: why do I have to do this? Why is there apple sauce?
Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy doing it. I love canning. Sometimes a bit too much. I’ll come home from work and announce that I’ve stopped at the grocery store—I bought pears!—and now we are going to pickle them!
It’s not that I don’t enjoy it. It was more existential. I wondered why I had to can anything.
Death. The answer is death.
Apples will rot. Vegetables will spoil. Greens will wilt. Herbs will dry and stiffen. Tomatoes will burst into a rancid, stinking mess. Meat will become diseased and fly infested.
So we can, cook, pickle, and preserve to cheat death.
Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat food from it
all the days of your life.
It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.
By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return. (Genesis 3)
To dust. The rotting, the festering, the molds, the spoiling—its all a precursor, a premonition of death. So we try to stop it the best we can, by cooking and boiling and submerging. And then the cans come back out with new, transformed foods. They are safe and preserved.
Safe and preserved. In other words, alive.
So I may have slighted canning a bit. It’s not as much cheating death as…a baptism, a resurrection. The food coming up out of the water, safe to eat, immune to spoil, to rotting, to death.
The next time you open a jar of pickles or a can of beans say softly to yourself, O Death, where is your victory?
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I don’t know how you managed to pack such a profound idea into so short a post, but you did. Amazing how the small and simple things in our lives actually function as a powerful, subversive act of redemption. My husband and I started a vegetable garden this year and through it we’ve realized the spiritual value of cultivation: of bringing good things to life. The tomatoes and zuchinni are amazing! But it also shapes my overall perspective and causes me to cultivate elsewhere in my life.
I know, right? I didn’t think gardening and cooking would change my spiritual life, but they have been two of the largest tools of discipleship in my life over the past few years.
I could say the same. Looking forward to the rest of your posts on the ethics of eating…
Canning as baptism and resurrection. Beautiful.
I love this. A theology of canning! Perfect post Thomas.
love this. our counters are laden with peppers ready to be turned to relish. maybe we will try applesauce. you’ve inspired me:)
I have a recipe printed out for pickled hot peppers. I just tend to eat them before I can preserve them!