The scent of simmering strawberries wraps itself around you like a warm summer breeze in the spacious commercial kitchen home to Wylder Space in Scotts Valley. On a long metal table, jars, ladles and sugar bags are organized around cutting boards and recipe sheets, lined up in stations.
A group of ten or so, mostly parents with grade-schoolers, stands listening attentively to the instructions for tackling the ruby-red berries heaped high in baskets in front of them. At the center of it all is Molly Bravo—chef, mom, business owner, homeschooler and now author—smiling as she stirs a bubbling pot of jam.
“I think we’re in the middle of a food preservation revival,” Bravo says, pouring the glossy mixture into waiting jars. “And I’m ready for it.”
Her new cookbook, The Essential Canning Cookbook (HarperCollins), is more than just a collection of over 75 recipes—it’s a love letter to seasonal eating, kitchen self-sufficiency and the slow-living ethos Santa Cruz knows by heart. Inside, readers will find a month-by-month canning calendar and practical tips that make the process approachable for beginners and deeply satisfying for seasoned home preservers. Whether you grow your own vegetables, subscribe to a CSA or hit the farmers market every weekend, Bravo’s guide shows how to transform local abundance into shelf-stable meals all year long.
And Molly Bravo is the perfect person to lead the charge.
‘This is about food sovereignty. Knowing where your food comes from, and preserving it with purpose. The creativity is endless.’ —Molly Bravo
A Pandemic Pivot
Like many stories of creative reinvention, Bravo’s canning journey began in 2020. “I had all these vegetables coming in from different farms, and I thought, ‘I’ve got to start preserving,’” she recalls. With no formal training, she dove in headfirst, guided by instinct and a touch of nostalgia. “My mom always had a garden and a pantry,” she says. “We made our own yogurt, baked fruit leather from scratch—it was just how we lived.”
The turning point came when her son’s teacher gave her a pressure canner. “I jumped in with both feet,” Bravo says. She began experimenting, leaning on her grandmother’s carefully handwritten recipes, still kept in a wooden box, as both inspiration and instruction.
In 2023, a deeper curiosity pulled her into her family’s past. Interviewing her 80-something father about his upbringing in West Virginia led her to research life during the Great Depression. “I started writing about how people lived back then,” Bravo says, “and then—out of the blue—a publisher approached me to write a canning cookbook.”
Canning as Community
Today, Bravo’s passion is less about stocking her own pantry and more about passing on the skill. Each week at Wylder Space, she hosts canning circles, where community members gather to preserve whatever’s in season—40 pounds of strawberries one week, homemade beef stock the next. “We’re canning 12 jars per week,” she says. “If you came every week for a year, you’d have over 600 jars.”
Some participants bring produce from their gardens; others source through local farmers markets. Bravo makes sure resources are available so anyone—garden or not—can join in. The crowd often includes homeschooling families, swapping stories while kids dart through the kitchen. “I imagine this happening more over time, once the word gets out,” she says. “It’s how it used to be—neighbors in church basements, exchanging recipes while their kids ran around.”
For those new to the craft, Bravo says, canning can feel intimidating. “There’s so much information out there, and it can be scary,” she admits. She sees canners falling into three camps:
- By-the-book traditionalists, following USDA guidelines to the letter.
- Rebel canners, who swear by their grandparents’ methods and resist any rules.
- Middle-of-the-road makers—like Bravo herself—who respect safety standards but allow for a little creativity once they’ve mastered the basics.
She recommends beginners start with water bath canning—“the way it’s been done for hundreds of years”—before branching into more advanced methods.
Meals in a Jar
While most people think of jams, pickles and tomatoes, Bravo sees the next frontier in “full-on meals in jars.” Imagine: chicken soup, hearty stews or vegetarian curries, all preserved and ready to heat on a busy night. “Stay-at-home moms are going to love it,” she predicts. “You can take your kids to soccer practice, pull a jar off the shelf, and have dinner in minutes.”
For Bravo, the appeal of canning goes beyond convenience or sustainability—it’s a way to reclaim something essential. “This is about food sovereignty,” she says. “Knowing where your food comes from, and preserving it with purpose. The creativity is endless.”
And in her kitchen, surrounded by friends old and new, with jars cooling on the counter and the hum of conversation in the air, it’s easy to see what she means.
For more information, visit wylderspace.com.
‘I had all these vegetables coming in from different farms, and I thought, I’ve got to start preserving. My mom always had a garden and a pantry. We made our own yogurt, baked fruit leather from scratch—it was just how we lived.’ —Molly Bravo
NEXT IN HOME AND GARDEN 2025—
