WHAT ARE YOU CANNING TODAY?

[rhoda_bruce]

I think you'd call one a cooker and one a canner, but we've used both. And I do have steam escaping at the lid, but I think its much hotter than a hot water bath would be. I'm finished and letting things cool off, but the pints won't be on the shelf long term anyway. When the family finds out I have it, its history. I guess it shouldn't be impossible to replace a seal.

 

[ORChick]

A couple of days ago I canned some chicken for the first time, as an experiment. I have never canned chicken before, as we (read: DH) don't do much with leftover/already cooked chicken, so it didn't seem practical. But I bought some chickens the other day (not yet to the point of raising our own meat chickens), froze a couple, and parted out the other two. 1 breast half for dinner for us both, the wings saved for another meal, as well as 2 of the legs/thighs. The remaining breasts, legs/thighs were cut off the bone, and canned (and the remainder went in the crockpot for stock). I only got 3 pints, which seemed a little disappointing for the effort involved, but once the meat was ready to pack into the jars it was simplicity itself. And, knowing that I wouldn't be anywhere near filling the canner, I had soaked a lot of pinto beans to take up some of the space. One of the 3 pints didn't seal , which was disappointing, but gave me an excuse to try the result today in a chicken salad. Not bad at all; not better than leftover roast chicken, but certainly no worse. And (the ones that sealed) are there waiting for the time they are needed. I will probably do this again.
Are you all laughing at me? You should understand that, growing up, the only canned meat we ate was tuna (oh, and chipped beef ; does that count?) This is not something I come to easily
The beans were canned with the Tattler lids - also a first time thing for me. Went very well, and they all sealed. I have one box of 12 of both the regular and the wide mouth, bought at not the best price locally. Now that I am familiar with how they work I will probably mail order some more, at a better price.

 

[cheepo]

congrats or chick...I know I was skeptical too...but it is very tasty, and canned left over turkey comes out tasting way freasher than frozen
today i made a big pot of borshe and plum sauce...
will be canning in the morning as it was getting just too hot...

 

[baymule]

I just canned 5 pints of blackberry-fig preserves. Yesterday I canned 5 pints of strawberry-fig preserves.

6 cups figs-mashed
6 cups sugar
1 cup water
3 (3) oz strawberry jello
1 box sure jell

Boil figs, sugar and water for 30 minutes.
Add jello and sure jell and boil 2 minutes longer.
Pack in hot sterile jars and cap lids on.
I got 5 pint jars plus a little bit I put in a plastic dish and refigerated. ( I mean refRigerated lol)


The 1st recipe I used for strawberry fig preserves didn't call for sure jell and it flopped. Both recipes said to peel the figs. I was dumb enough to peel the 1st batch. I didn't peel the 2nd batch and we had some on toast this morning. It was so good! Plus I don't remember my grandmother peeling her figs either.

Whoo-Hoo!!! I picked more figs yesterday and got only 4 cups of chopped mashed figs. So I added 2 cups of mashed blackberries and proceded with the above recipe. Instead of strawberry jello, I used blackberry jello. I scraped and licked the pot I cooked 'em in.

 

[BarredBuff]

Only 4 sealed yesterday and we reprocessed the ones that didn't and they sealed as soon as they got out.....

 

[moolie]

Got a great deal on 50 lbs of organic Roma tomatoes at the end of the day at the Farmer's Market today, so guess what I'm doing tomorrow...

 

[baymule]

Got a great deal on 50 lbs of organic Roma tomatoes at the end of the day at the Farmer's Market today, so guess what I'm doing tomorrow...

Ummmm.......let me guess what you are doing tomorrow........tap dancing lessons?? Great score on the tomatoes-WOW!

 

[BarredBuff]

Got a great deal on 50 lbs of organic Roma tomatoes at the end of the day at the Farmer's Market today, so guess what I'm doing tomorrow...

 

[hqueen13]

FIRST time canning and this is the result:

USNBrat came over and helped me, thank goodness because she was running the show I was just following directions! We originally bought 50 lbs of tomatoes, and only ended up canning 20, 5lbs got diced after being blanched and went into marinara today (can't wait to learn to can that!). She took the other box home to process later. We got started WAY later than we intended (got a lil side tracked at the gun shop... ) and finally the jars came out of the canner at about 7:00, and we finally sat down to FRESH corn and awesome organic chicken quarters for dinner at 8! WHEW!!!

Can't wait to progress to apple butter, marinara, chilli and oh so much more!!!

 

[moolie]

Got a great deal on 50 lbs of organic Roma tomatoes at the end of the day at the Farmer's Market today, so guess what I'm doing tomorrow...

Ummmm.......let me guess what you are doing tomorrow........tap dancing lessons?? Great score on the tomatoes-WOW!

Lol, yes--tap dancing, that's it!

indeed, I was very happy! We stopped off at the end of the day to see if there were any deals and hubs bought 25 lbs of simply gorgeous Romas (still on the vine!) while I was chatting with another vendor. When I got out to the car and saw the crate I asked him about the price, and then told him to go right back and see if they had any more--he came back with a second 25 lb crate!

It really pays to get to know the vendors at your local market, we've been buying from this vendor for 5 or 6 years now and he just gave us the tomatoes in his plastic crates, trusting us to bring them back next week

Here's the 8 pints plus 2 half pints of salsa I made today in addition to 11 half-pints of raspberry jam (story in my journal):

8 pints with glass lids plus 2 half-pints salsa

11 half-pints of raspberry jam (first time ever using Pomona's Pectin, seems to have worked great!)

I still have most of the tomatoes left to make into tomato sauce, chili sauce (hoping that a recipe I found recently will taste like what my Grandma used to make, I was too young when she passed away to have thought of asking for her recipe), and probably some more salsa.