Canning, anyone?

[bambu101]

Canning- anyone?

My latest hobby started with finally reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (Barbara Kingsolver) in July. I was inspired to dig out my old canner. I started back at the beginning of August by making wild blueberry jam, and things kind of took off from there. Since then, my water bath canner from 20 years ago has been getting some major “stove-time”. I have canned peaches in light syrup, peach jam, plum chutney, autumn fruit jam (pears, apples, and peaches), crushed heirloom tomatoes, tomato sauce, bruschetta salsa, dill pickles, and bread and butter pickles. I ordered a food mill last weekend, after deciding that it is too much work to skin tomatoes by hand, and plan on using it to make applesauce.

Has anyone else re-discovered or discovered this “forgotten art” recently? I am just tickled pink with the Mason jars all lined up on my shelves, neatly labeled, and filled with luscious fruits and vegetables. I have also been drying tomatoes in the food dehydrator. I really like knowing exactly where this food came from, and how it was processed. I am also looking forward to pulling out a beautiful golden jar of peaches on a snowy, sub-zero winter morning, and remembering that warm August day when I put them up.

[GLC1968]

I just started this year. So far, I've only done two batches of blackberry jam (one with seeds, one without) and a batch of applesauce. I will have to do MUCH more once we harvest the rest of the fruit (apples, pears and grapes still to come).

We got the veggie garden in too late this year to have enough to can - but we hope to be able to put up a ton of that stuff next year. By then, I hope to have put aside enough $ to buy a pressure canner.

I'd like to try canning milk (since we have a huge surplus), but I think I need a pressure canner for that...

I know what you mean about the joy of seeing those jars all lined up. I totally agree! I can't wait to add to it!

[Becky]

When I was younger, our family would can applesauce, all sorts of jams, peaches, beets, and we froze a lot of stuff too. Making applesauce was always fun

Now, I freeze a lot of things, but haven't canned anything yet. There's a big warning in the owner's manual for my gas stove about not canning on it, but no explanation why. Something to do with the pilotless burners maybe?

[spokewench]

I haven't had the canner out since I moved to Flagstaff. The gardening here does not produce all that much good produce and even local produce is hard to come by and not so great; so alas, without the stuff to can, I am canless!

When I was in California, I would stock up at the Farmer's Market and can to my heart's content. I have to say I miss it and probably always will as long as I live in this godforsaken gardenless climate!

[tulip]

Now that I'm in my house, I fully intend to have a big vegetable garden and do some canning. I'm thinking I'll start with pickles since my stepmother used to make pickles from the garden when I was growing up. It'll have to wait until next year, since I don't yet have a garden (or a kitchen, for that matter).

This is a good blog from my city (Richmond, Virginia):
http://www.rivercityharvest.org/

Granny Miller has all sorts of useful information (although she's taking a break at the moment).
http://www.grannymillerblog.blogspot.com/

[BleeckerSt_Girl]

Last autumn we had free access to an old organic apple orchard. I made quarts and quarts of applesauce and apple butter. I thought it would all last for a year, but it was all gone in 8 months.
The apple butter was the big favorite. Plus, if you make each batch in a big slow cooker (crockpot)- a whole day for each batch, it makes the house smell so GOOD for a whole week.

[anakiwa]

My latest hobby started with finally reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (Barbara Kingsolver) in July.

Great book! Her book, as well as 'Omnivore's Dilema' and the localvore movement here in Vermont got me canning, freezing, and dehydrating.

I filled all our medium sized jars with tomatoes and figured I had to stop (the dehydrator is running as I write this though). For anyone looking for advice, Joy of Cooking has a fairly comprehensive section on preserving food (I suspect any comprehensive cookbook might as well- you may already have the info on your shelf). We don't bother skinning or seeding the tomatoes- we just cut out the stems, quarter them and put them through the food processor. We cook off a little of the extra liquid and then can them plain (with vinegar or citric acid for safety). When we use them- we'll add garlic, wine, red pepper, whatever we want to make sauce- or just add to a recipe.

I also put quarts and quarts of berries into the freezer- I'm loving having fruit on my cereal every day! (And the quality of fruit that you've cleaned and tray frozen yourself is great- I suspect I could probably pass them off as fresh if I tried).

[bambu101]

This site is a good resource for canning and preserving recipes, questions, links,supplies, etc:

http://www.freshpreserving.com/phpbb...ac8919c2585c2d