Among cooking hobbyists, canning is so cool, it’s hot. Making up batches of pickled cucumbers, tomatoes, and peaches purloined from an overripe August garden or the prizes of an exuberant shopping spree at the local farmer’s market, younger home cooks are turning to grandmothers and Web sites for advice on how to preserve favorite summer foods safely when a craving strikes in mid-January.

Up until recently, practicing the art of jarring and canning has all but gone underground, except in more rural areas closely connected to the land. In its heyday at the end of WWII, most households were canning and preserving the foods grown in their “Victory Gardens,” when it was seen as a patriotic duty to ensure that your family was a self-sufficent as possible so more supplies and materials would be available to soldiers. And the broad availablility of prepared foods and the ever expanding network of worldwide food distribution ensures most folks can get strawberries in December. But the very qualities that make these products shippable also make them taste miserable.

And so, the long-neglected art of canning is beginning to make a comeback — owing to the availability of plentiful and inexpensive produce, access to information, and interest from high-profile food types such as Equinox‘s Todd and Ellen Gray, who shared with us a recipe and method for canning abundant summer peaches and tomatoes.