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MrsWildweasel

MrsWildweasel

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Canning yet? I have started. Tomorrow I will be canning beets, greenbeans, pickles, and blanching and freezing summer squash and zucchini.
I've been processing it today in preparation for tomorrow.
Hubby made me an outdoor kitchen this year so I don't have to heat up the house.[grin]
I also of a batch of sauerkraut fermenting in the crock. (My first experiment with this.)
Also am trying pickled bologna. See how it comes out.[laugh]
 
This is my first year canning. My mom-in-law helped me can 17 pints of green beans. Unfortunately my garden is really struggling. I have had green tomato's on the vine for 3 weeks! I added 9-12-12 and they are turning. I am not going to get a big harvest. Onions and potatoes are small and I have had to spray for the blight.

Have you canned pumpkin? The pumpkins look like they are going to be good this year.
 
T3andme said:
This is my first year canning. My mom-in-law helped me can 17 pints of green beans. Unfortunately my garden is really struggling. I have had green tomato's on the vine for 3 weeks! I added 9-12-12 and they are turning. I am not going to get a big harvest. Onions and potatoes are small and I have had to spray for the blight.

Have you canned pumpkin? The pumpkins look like they are going to be good this year.
Click to expand...

My pumpkins aren't ready yet. That is on the list. We lost all of our tomatoes. We had over 50 plants. We are really peeved on that one.
We got a spaghetti squash.
Didn't get peas this year, something decided they were tasty. At least I got beets so far, carrots should be coming along hopefully.
I planted sugar pumpkins so I am hoping I get a decent crop of them to can for my pumpkin pies.
We are getting there, I just hope next summer is way better than this one.
 
I don't have a garden, too much shade. Food prices are too high for me to just buy it to can, and I don't know of anyplace to buy the slightly damaged stuff. *sigh* *pity party* [laugh]

However I do know a place that sells windfall apples, I get those for cheap. Last year I made 100 quarts of applesauce (the farmer I usually buy from had a bad year, couldn't sell his crop, so he let me pick from certain trees for free!!! I made him a quilt to say thank you. [grin] ) I have a LOT left still, so I might focus on dried apples this year. They are a royal pain to make and the kids don't like eating dried apples (mystifies me! [thinking] ) but they are yummy and so useful to have, and they last forever. I'm going to use the vacuum-sealer on them.

So the apples won't be ready for several weeks yet at the very least, but then I'll be going to town.
 
Has anybody here ever taken advantage of the wild grapes that grow around here? At least they do here in CT, don't know about further north in MA but I would think it's not THAT much different.

I have picked them a few times, but #1 I found it was intertwined with lots of poison oak, etc [shocked] and #2 it's possible to make juice or even wine out of it but it takes SOOOO many pounds of grapes to do it. Is it worth it, I dunno- [thinking] Anybody ever tried?
 
My parents have a family friend who has been "canning" for years and has sworn by it. Two years ago though something happened with one of his jars. Somehow it got contaminated with bacteria and when he ate the contents he had a reaction that basically put him in the hospital for two weeks. He was almost completely paralysed.

He's fine now and still canning, but the biggest piece of advise he gives now is that you have to be REAL careful when doing it. It may sound easy, but a mistake can have deadly consequences.

Not trying to scare anyone away from doing it. Just reminding people, that just like guns, canning has safety guidelines that need to be followed to the letter so bad things don't happen.
 
That's a good point Rockriver and I'd like to add something. Older canning books have outdated directions, and if a person follows them they are risking food poisoning. I think it was the 70's, the gov't did a bunch of tests to see what methods worked and what didn't, and what actually eliminated bacteria, etc, and what didn't. What came out of it was huge changes in recommendations for canning- like twice the time to cook, for a lot of them. So I wouldn't trust any methods before the 70's. Use old recipes but use modern recommendations as to how much time to cook the most vulnerable item in your recipe.

I knew one woman for a while, she firmly believed that it was perfectly o.k. to can things in an open water-bath in a roasting pan IN THE OVEN [shocked]

BTW, I have not tried it out but I am 99% sure that it is possible to reuse those old wire-bale jars in this manner- stick a standard canning lid on top, and cut out a piece of rubber (you can get something suitable at the dollar store) to drape over it, and put the glass lid over those and latch it down, and can it as usual. The rubber (or whatever you use) will serve to keep the canning lid in place until it has made it's seal.
 
I have several Ball canning books, and follow the recipes there. No problems. I also do not reuse the lids, they are cheap enough that we buy new ones. I am not willing to risk food poisoning.
 
Lilorfnannie said:
Has anybody here ever taken advantage of the wild grapes that grow around here? At least they do here in CT, don't know about further north in MA but I would think it's not THAT much different.

I have picked them a few times, but #1 I found it was intertwined with lots of poison oak, etc [shocked] and #2 it's possible to make juice or even wine out of it but it takes SOOOO many pounds of grapes to do it. Is it worth it, I dunno- [thinking] Anybody ever tried?
Click to expand...

Hubby makes grape jelly. They aren't wild ones though.[grin]
 
jenlynn724 said:
I wish I knew how..
Click to expand...

Yes Jenn, it's not hard, you can do it [grin] If you can master something like firing & disassembling & cleaning a semi-automatic then you can get canning [smile]

Try YouTube videos and Instructables too- start with something easy and work your way up. You can buy frozen juice and make jelly out of that, that's a pretty easy one- It takes a little bit to learn what the jellying stage is but you can master that one. You might have a few bad batches but that's o.k. too- I certainly didn't get it right my first few tries [grin]

The main thing about canning is that it's often hot, tedious work that takes a long time to prep- and secondly there are a very few simple rules to follow but they must be followed to a "T". As in, if it says eliminate the bubbles with a plastic knife, wipe off the rim, sterilize the lids, put the lid on just so, and boil for 10 minutes- then it has to be done exactly that way. All simple stuff but it does have to be done exactly.

Nowadays our society is so dumbed-down that simple things like following directions like that seem insurmountable [rolleyes] But we know better!!!!
 
We've been doing moose/dear/pork and chicken to get ready for the winter, trying to keep the meat from getting freezer burned and keep from having to spend money on meat when we need to be heating the apartment.

Canning isn't that hard if you read the instructions, we use a mirro pressure canner 22qt, it works great, we got it for around $70 and we've done about 30 cans of meat. (we don't have a garden, someday we'll do veggies)
 
Tomorrow I will be canning beets, greenbeans, pickles, and blanching and freezing summer squash and zucchini.
Click to expand...

That!

We got some zucchini this year as big as my forearm. It's going to taste fantastic in February with a nice red sauce, schlepped over a pile of spaghetti. [smile]
 
T3andme said:
How do you do up your zucchini? Tell me please since I do have some serious zucchini.
Click to expand...

For just-picked eating, I grill it. Slice thick, slather with olive oil, S&P, and garlic, then throw onto a hot grill, ~4 minutes per side.

For freezing, I usually just slice the zucchini, drop it into a pot of boiling water for one minute, then rinse it under COLD tap water for another two, pat dry with a CLEAN cloth or paper towel, and bag it in portion sizes, which then go three to a large freezer bag. These get dated and put in the chest freezer. If you cook it all the way before freezing, it will be a blob of nasty when it comes out of the freezer. In my experience, it will not be very good without a parboiling first, either. So I hit it just enough to tenderize, without fully cooking it. Same process for summer squash.

I also make a zucchini sauce for pasta, which is a basic pasta sauce with some sausage and quartered zucchini slices mixed in. I have not tried freezing this as a completed sauce, but may do so this year. [grin]
 
I did take pics so just need hubby to download them for me. I even took pics of my outdoor kitchen. [laugh]
I canned 8 pints of beats, 16 quarts of pickles, and I am now waitiing on 7 pints of beans, then I can call it a day. [laugh]
 
Today is actually canning of the sauerkraut that has been fermenting for 3 weeks. [laugh]
This weekend I also canned 19 pints of carrots and 5 pints of beans. I will be doing more beans here also.
Today is waterbath canning.[laugh]
 
I'm in full works here. Just got done freezing 8 months worth of greenbeans canned 8 months worth of applesauce, put away a ton of potatoes, put away 25 lbs of butter home churned, and plenty more to go.
Squahs look great in garden, Eating the beets off fast, Getting the carrots and onions ready for freezing. I do soup stock bags. O SO MUCH and SO LITTLE TIME AND PATIANCE to TYPE. Talk later need to go out and plump up my deer :) Don
 
I'll be canning peach chutney on Friday. This weekend I am going to be making jellys and jams. I am wondering what corn cob jelly taste like.
 
THEFAN said:
I'm in full works here. Just got done freezing 8 months worth of greenbeans canned 8 months worth of applesauce, put away a ton of potatoes, put away 25 lbs of butter home churned, and plenty more to go.
Squahs look great in garden, Eating the beets off fast, Getting the carrots and onions ready for freezing. I do soup stock bags. O SO MUCH and SO LITTLE TIME AND PATIANCE to TYPE. Talk later need to go out and plump up my deer :) Don
Click to expand...

I have more beans to do. I have pumpkins coming along nicely. Looks like you have been busy.[laugh]
Can I ask why your freezing all of that and not canning it? I froze alot the first year I was getting back into this, but then I started thinking I'd hate to lose it all if we lost power.
The stuff I have canned tastes wayyyy better than the store bought canned.
 

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