Adventures in Home Canning

Well, I picked up a new hobby.  A gigantic pain in the neck and time consuming hobby.  It all started during the spring when fruit was being offered by the case for cheap through the local farmers co-op I shop at.  And when I say cheap, I mean cheap.  Blueberries were 10 bucks a case.  Yes, a case.  Strawberries, same price.  So of course, I bought a bunch.  Cases and cases, to be more specific.  

I froze some, and I canned some.  Pies, muffins, pancakes.  It makes recipes a snap if you already have the fruit ready to go.

The blueberries were easy.  

See that smile?  That's fake.  I'm sure you could tell.  Justice pitted two cases of cherries.  And when I say cases, I mean like 40 pounds.  Six cherries at a time in the pitter, he pitted cherries for about five hours.  He was a champ.

We canned peaches, blueberries, cherries, apples, made apple butter, hulled and froze a ton of strawberries.  Then I got bored of fruit.  I had a years worth of fruit put up in the pantry, but one can't survive on fruit alone.

I guess I should mention that this started out as simple as me buying all that fruit because it was cheap, but it slowly started to morph into more than that.  We had a rough winter last year.  We had a few ice events, and some snow.  Power was out in our new subdivision for nearly two weeks.  The bread and milk aisles of every store were bare.  I'm not the person that thinks it's a good idea to buy milk in a storm.  I have an enormous responsibility in making sure that three hungry boys have more than milk and bread to eat if we have a repeat of last winter.  And do you know what I don't like?  Freeze dried "emergency food".  I think it's gross, and it's very expensive.  It doesn't take a lot of effort to build up your food stores though, so there is that.  What you spend in money you save in time for sure.  

So anyway, the local farm was offering tomatoes at ten dollars per case.  WOW, right?  Yeah, ten bucks.  Can't say no to that.  Eventually I canned 250 pounds of tomatoes.  Italian tomatoes, chili tomatoes, tomato puree, tomato sauce, salsa, homemade Rotel.  I actually had to make salsa twice, because the kids ate the entire first 25 pounds in about a month.  

This picture is just one days worth of tomatoes.  There were about 75 jars of tomatoes all total.  We eat a lot of tomatoes.

I made some fruit cup.  That was a first, I just had a bunch of odds and ends in the fridge and they weren't going to last forever so I chopped it up and canned it.  The kids love it.  

And then, I knew I had to learn to do the inevitable.  

Use the pressure canner.  

I have had a pressure canner for many years, and I've never used it.  You know, for fear of blowing up the kitchen and/or killing my entire family from botulism.  I've been too scared to do it.  My Aunt Cyndie suggested I start out with something easy like beans.  So, that's what I did.  And she was right, it was easy.  SUPER easy.  

See those pinto beans?  You're probably wondering what you can do with beans in a jar.  Well, last night I simply opened up two jars and whizzed them in the food processor and they were hands down the best homemade refried beans ever.  I'll never buy store canned refried beans again.  Since I canned them with a slice of bacon and a little salt, they didn't even need any seasoning.  

After I successfully canned the beans, I decided to move on to soup.  

I LOVE SOUP.  My kids love soup.  I would eat soup every single day in the winter if it didn't need to sit on the stove simmering all day.  Homemade soup is time consuming, but I figured if I spent ONE day cooking a gigantic pot I could can it and eat it over a long period of time.  Turns out my gigantic pot makes 14 quarts of soup.  That's a lot of soup!

I made chicken tortilla soup first, it's the family favorite.  

Then I got a sweet deal on a gigantic package of stew meat.  So yeah, 14 quarts of beef stew were next.    Then I made chili.

And how about some plain old vegetable bean soup?  Funny story.  We all know I suck at math, but I'm usually really great at what I call "life math", and since I'm usually doubling and tripling recipes all the time, I am pretty good at that sort of thing.  Boy did I mess my calculations on the veggie soup up.  I ended up with 25 quarts instead of 14.  Once I realized how much soup I was going to have, I split the base up and added italian sausage to half and navy beans to the other so it would be a little different.  I eat this one all the time, it's my favorite.  

Then the farmers co-op had potatoes in bulk for pennies.  So I canned some potatoes.  They are good in potato salad and they mash up really well.  I can't tell you how much I hate peeling potatoes.  I sucked it up and peeled all these so we could have potato dishes more often.  

I canned baby carrots next.  These are my favorite, that glaze is brown sugar and they are to die for.

Then I got a little crazy.  I got a free squash from someone at church.  I canned that.

It was a gigantic squash.  It almost killed me to peel it and chop it up.  But I'm glad I did, it's very tasty.

Then I canned sweet potatoes.  We eat a lot of sweet potatoes.  I canned some in water and some in a homemade cinnamon spice brown sugar syrup.  Best sweet potatoes ever.

And suddenly, my pantry was full.  I canned 40 pounds of chicken breasts and realized I was out of room.  Yes, I canned 40 pounds of chicken breasts.  And wow are they tasty.  That was only half of what I bought, I froze the other 40 pounds.  

The best thing about canning chicken is that you have pre-cooked chicken ready to go for any meal that calls for chicken.  It also makes great chicken salad.  It is very good.  

Burt wait, what about the leftover turkey and turkey carcass from Thanksgiving?  I couldn't throw that out, right?  

Nope.  Broth.

And soup base.  

Pressure canning is really time consuming.  The day I canned the chicken breasts I was in the kitchen for seven solid hours.  You have to pay attention the whole time you are canning so you don't blow up the kitchen, and it makes your kitchen HOT.  And that makes you tired.  But it's not hard.  It's easy, and I'm glad I finally conquered my fear of the pressure canner.  I have recently inherited my Mom's pressure canner, and once I get it checked out to make sure it's working properly, it will cut my canning time in half because I can run two canners at once.  Yay!!!!  That means my chicken breast day would have been down to 3 1/2 hours instead of seven!

And could I have frozen most of that food?  Yes, of course.  I easily could have taken that same 14 quarts of soup and put it in the freezer.  But, I don't have that much freezer room, and most of this was done in case of a severe winter weather event where we may lose power.  If it's canned and on my shelf, I don't have to worry about it going bad if the power is out for a long period of time.  And while I was thinking along those lines, I made sure that I purchased enough extra jars to process ALL the meat in my freezer to prevent it from spoiling due to a power outage.  My cooktop is gas, it will work just fine without electricity so I can make sure I don't lose any meat.  And my freezer is packed with it, I'd sure hate to have to throw it all out.

In case you are wondering about breakfast, I have an enormous 5 gallon bucket of just-add water pancake mix to take care of that problem. I have a bunch of oatmeal too, although I'm pretty sure the pancakes will win the vote every morning.

I know I have plenty of food put aside for the winter, and I can breathe easy if the weatherman starts to talk about ice.  If the weather decides to do something crazy, we are ready.  But I'm fairly certain that we will have a very mild winter, and you all can thank me for that.  I am prepared, therefore it will not storm.  

You're welcome.