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Several people in California have been affected by a botulism outbreak originating at a gas station. Botulinum bacteria are anaerobic and can contaminate improperly canned foods, such as a gas station's nacho cheese:
An outbreak of severe food poisoning in Sacramento, California, that left nine people in hospital has been linked to cheese sauce sold on nacho crisps at a family-run petrol station.
[...] Cases of botulism, a rare and sometimes fatal form of food poisoning, were first reported on 5 May and in total nine people are confirmed to have it. One of the victims is reportedly so ill she cannot speak or keep her eyes open.
[...] Botulism poisoning is caused by toxins released by a type of bacteria called Clostridium botulinum. Human digestive processes cannot break down the toxic chemical, which moves to the nervous system. Symptoms emerge in adults 18-36 hours after eating contaminated food.
Also at CBS and The Sacramento Bee.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday May 22 2017, @08:11PM
My favorite junk food to can so far is "orange marmalade". It's more like a sauce if you don't boil it long enough and I add habeñeros (as the recipe calls for) or other hot peppers to make it spicy. It uses an insane amount of sugar. I think I used 30 cups of sugar (over 10 lbs?) with 16 pounds of oranges or something crazy like that.
Once it's done, you have a sauce that you can easily use to make some very tasty orange chicken or pulled pork. Add some rice and stir fried veggies and you can pretend it's healthy. At the very least, it's a meal rather than a dessert.
Not everything that you can has to be junk. For example, I canned some sliced apples in ultra light syrup (1/2 cup sugar per 5 cups water... compare to simply syrup which is 1:1 sugar and water). I just wanted to can them before they went bad and didn't have the time to make goddamn apple butter or something, as delicious as that is. Since the apples are already sliced and peeled, they are ready to be used for an apple pie or crumble. Or you could just eat them as is.
I would have to run the numbers, but it seems to me that taco sauce would be more expensive to home can than buy at the store due to the cost of tomatoes, while jellies and jams might be significantly cheaper than what the store offers, if you can get a cheap source of fruit (such as one of those farms where you can go there and pick blueberries, or an extra dank sale at ALDI where berries are under $1 per unit). The orange marmalade I mentioned is going to be much cheaper than strawberry or blueberry concoctions, but it seems like you can still beat store bought jellies. And you can add extra stuff like rum or vanilla.
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