Wannabefree...guess what I got in the mail today!?!?!?!?

lazyday said:
absolutely beautiful :thumbsup Am I seeing corn in the third picture?
YES! :D So far we have corn, beets, tomatoes, green beans, potatoes, jams, spaghetti sauce, pizza sauce, corn relish, sweet relish, pickled peppers, and....apple butter, and..... :lol: i can't remember it all. Not ALL of it is out there yet.
 
I'd be curious to know what numbers you come up with, WBF. I'm struggling with the same question for our family of four. I'm going to be buying a lot of bushels of stuff, plus the jars, so its really not going to pay off much this year. Hopefully next year I can get stuff done right at a better time of year. I should be good on greenbeans though, lol.
 
It is a good looking pantry. When did you first start your adventure in canning? I am working on it but I see it must take years of practice to get it right
 
We just raided WalMart for over $300 worth of jars :th We have 128 quarts of green beans, but we are shooting for upwards of 200-250 quarts each of beans and corn, and less of some of the other less consumed things like relishes and such. That was 6 bushels of beans BTW, if that helps.
 
lazyday said:
It is a good looking pantry. When did you first start your adventure in canning? I am working on it but I see it must take years of practice to get it right
I started water bath canning years ago. This is actually a cooperative effort between me and the neighbor family, and THEY do the pressure canning ;) I'm just taking baby steps on that road. We help each other, and I know they won't not let me in there because I make too much of their food :lau This is at their house, but it's collectively our food. ;)
 
Looks great! :thumbsup :drool

What are the dimensions of the room? I'd love to have a space like that, our "pantry" is spread throughout kitchen cupboards, shelves in a converted coat closet, buckets here and there, and two metal canning shelves in an odd bumped out section in our basement guest room.
 
moolie said:
Looks great! :thumbsup :drool

What are the dimensions of the room? I'd love to have a space like that, our "pantry" is spread throughout kitchen cupboards, shelves in a converted coat closet, buckets here and there, and two metal canning shelves in an odd bumped out section in our basement guest room.
10x30 There is a chest freezer on one end that I was standing in front of for the pics. Plenty of space on there!
 
I got caught up wrestling munchkins last night :lol: With the AC being out down at the neighbors, they at least sent the three kids down here. They got here about 8:30 and we threw everyone in the bath to get cooled down and into jammies. Then we peeked in on the chicks hatching in the bator for an hour or so, they loved that. Even the 17 yr. old was entranced by the little fluff butts hatching out :) The twins sat up with me for a bit longer watching cartoons, and my boy fell asleep laying across my lap. Such sweet kiddos :love I carried him to bed, then hit the bed myself. The other two were out shortly afterward as well. I think we all slept hard. Everyone is just now getting up, and I am about to prepare a breakfast for 6. 4 year olds are bossy :lau They want eggs, cereal, toast, and bacon, and chocolate milk.....we'll see what we can come up with ;) See ya'll in a bit :frow
 
Love the pantry!

WBF, I left the 'how much of what do we need' to my DH. He loves doing that stuff. He sat down and figured out our usual meals (for a whole year! :ep ), then he calculated the amount of canned goods needed for each meal X how many times we eat that meal in an average year, and told me how many half pints/pints/quarts of each item I'd need. Keep in mind, the guy is a bit anal ( :lol: ), so he divided our pantry into store bought and home canned. He has a log book just inside the door, that DS and I MUST keep up with - he goes through and 'checks' how well we're doing once a month :rolleyes: I pick on him about it, but it makes things SO much easier to be so organized. I planned my garden based on his calculations. It would be different for everybody, of-course. If I try something new and we like it, he sits down and figures out the additional needs for me. So, if you have an anal math whiz handy, figuring out the canning needs for any size family would be a snap :lau BTW, we wait for our local big box lumber store (here it's Menards) to run their sales on canning jars - we get cases of pints/quarts for $6.88! Half pints are impossible to find anywhere around here, so we order those (we use a lot for butter, cheese and some of our cubed up meats). Just so you know, our pantry looks pretty bare too! There are still a bunch of empty jars, waiting for this years harvest! :fl
 
When we work out the "how much", we think about it in terms of how many/what size jars per meal, then per week and per month (for the things that take longer to use up like pickles and jam etc.) :)

We try to put up a minimum of:

Per Week:
2 quarts of tomato sauce
7 quarts of assorted veggies (but most of ours are frozen, not canned)
2 pints of ground bison
2 quarts of fruit (peaches/pears/fruit cocktail)
1-2 pints of salsa

Per Month:
2 pints of jam
1 quart of pickles
1 pint of each condiment: relishes, chutneys, sauces etc.

This isn't all, but it's how we approach it. We did pretty well this past year, but have run out of a few things that we knew we didn't can enough of, so we'll try to do more this year :)
 
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