Are any two foods more different than fresh asparagus and canned asparagus? I mean, if you took the blindfold test, and had a bite of one, and later on a bite of the other – would you recognize it as the same food? No!

Now when it comes to corn – canned and fresh corn are at least both recognizable as corn. Green beans too. But not so with asparagus.

And how about peas? Have you ever had bright green peas right out of the garden, sweet and thrilling off the vine? They’re spherical but that’s about all they have in common with the squishy, drab canned pea. Fresh sauted spinach next to canned? Nyet.

Now we’ve acknowledged they’re not the same experience as fresh, but here’s a good word or three about canned produce. My mom used to chill canned asparagus in the ‘icebox’ in the summer, and put it in iceberg lettuce salads with some cucumber and tomato. We really liked that, lightly coated with Wishbone Italian Dressing. Fresh asparagus I love, but sometimes I secretly return to salad of the 1960s.

I’ve been told canned tomatoes can be better for a good spaghetti sauce. Unlike most fresh store-bought tomatoes that are plucked early to survive travel, tomatoes used for canning are left on the vine in the sunshine until completely ripe. The taste is full, the color rich red, and nutrients are preserved. Thus, a sauce made of the canned tomatoes may be more flavorful than one made with fresh tomatoes.

It’s harder to justify canned spinach if you can get fresh. However, prepared with a little sauted onion or light cream cheese, it is good, and let’s be grateful.

Canned foods can keep well for long periods of time. They don’t go bad after a week or two. You can have good tomatoes in the dead of winter. And, back to the green peas. Have you ever taken a fork and used mashed potatoes to capture warm, buttered canned peas running around on your plate? Yep. Who would want to give up that?