If, like many people, you’re on a drive to gain a little more food self-sufficiency, you will first need to get past the look of canned meat.

I’m not talking SPAM, but home-canned meats, which make SPAM look like a culinary beauty.

The pints and quarts of canned venison on our kitchen countertop start with a white congealed layer of tallow that rises to the top. Pale, brownish-gray cubes of meat are suspended in broth.

The venture into home canning began with a new pressure cooker, a couple cases of Kerr jars, lids and recipes from the Internet. The online community of canning enthusiasts promise a low-cost cornucopia of possibilities, from meat and potatoes to mangos and tomatoes.

Despite the look of jarred meat, once removed and re-heated, it is fabulously tender and tasty.

And while it’s recommended you eat it within a few years, it can last virtually forever. There are many reports of canned meats and other foods, 100 or more years old, containing most of their nutrients and apparently still good to eat.

Canning has become a mostly lost art. I remember the rows of neatly lined jars on the shelves in our farmhouse basement — a palette of colors and textures.

The past few years a hot item at Hobby Lobby and other stores have been the decorative jars filled with realistic looking plastic fruits and vegetables — cherries, oranges, string beans and strawberries. A nostalgic replacement for days gone by.

Now the faux canned goods are being pushed aside for the real thing.

“Oh, golly, yes,” says Hilltop Hy-Vee store manger Dan Olson when asked if they’ve been selling more canning supplies.

“They just went through the roof last year, like a 75 percent increase in canning supplies and pickling things. I expect it to double this year again.”

And they’re frantically looking for a supplier for pressure cookers.

They’ve also had a run on freezer bags, storage containers, anything to freeze or store food in.

Go to the Mankato link on Craigslist.com and you’ll find dozens of people desperate for canning supplies of all kinds.

The value of Ball jar lids, it seems, rockets as the stability of jobs declines.