WHAT ARE YOU CANNING TODAY?

[Mickey328]

Those are gorgeous, Moolie! Makes me wish now I had the glass lids too

Did carrots today...about 22 lbs of 'em. 11 pints cooling now, and about 8 more in the canner with half an hour to go. One of 'em in the first batch managed to tip over so all the water drained out LOL, guess we'll be having carrots for dinner tomorrow!

 

[moolie]

Made up another two big pots of apple sauce, will can those tomorrow.

Just pulled 8 pints of Beef Vegetable Soup out of the pressure canner

 

[Mickey328]

I'm curious, Moolie. Does your family eat most of your canned goods, or do you sell them?

 

[sweetproserpina]

Yup, regularly--I've done tomato sauce, salsa, chutney, antipasto, apple sauce, fruit cocktail, pears, and peaches:

http://www.rgdyck.com/moolie/peached2012-2.jpg

Wow! Those are gorgeous!

 

[moolie]

I'm curious, Moolie. Does your family eat most of your canned goods, or do you sell them?

We eat it all

We are big fruit eaters, and my Mom canned like this when I was a kid so it's what I'm used to (we lived in a big fruit-growing area in BC called the Okanagan Valley when I was small so fruit was all around us). Through the summer months my biggest goal (other than keeping the garden alive) is to find the best deals on enough fruit and tomatoes to get us through to the next summer--peaches, pears, apples/applesauce, fruit cocktail (peaches/pears/pineapple/grapes/cherries). WAY cheaper than I could ever buy commercially canned from the grocery store.

Our other canned staples are canned meats--mostly ground bison but also chicken, beef, and pork canned in chunks which all make for super quick easy dinners. Plus what everyone here calls "convenience meals" like soups, chili, baked beans, stew etc.

Beyond those staples I also make dill pickles, bread & butter pickles, pickled beets, dilly pickled beans, various relishes/antipasto/chutneys as meal accompaniments. And jams. There's probably more, this is just off the top of my head.

I only began using my Mom's old pressure canner a few years ago, but I've been doing all the fruit, tomatoes, pickles/relishes, and jam since I got married 19 years ago. Mom bought the pressure canner in order to can salmon when we lived on Haida Gwaii/Queen Charlotte Islands in BC. Most kids grow up on peanut butter or tuna sandwiches, we grew up on salmon sandwiches and everything else--but it was what was local and cheap so we ate it. I avoided salmon for a number of years after we left the islands, but now appreciate it again--and how lucky we were to have had it so good when we were kids.

I've always given away a few jars of jam and pickles and relishes at Christmas, and I think there are a few family members who actually count on getting a jar of something in their stockings each year.

But most of it is for us

 

[Mickey328]

Wow, that's a lot...yer a kitchen goddess! LOL. I got my pressure canner several years ago so I could can chili. This is the first year I've ever done just meat. I've put up 5 quarts of beef, 12 pints of ground beef and 6 qts of chicken. I've got green beans and carrots now, and will hopefully be doing some potatoes as well. Soups and such I'll do later on, once the fruit and veggie rush is over. We work weird hours so having time to actually cook a meal and eat it together is a rare thing. I figure with the components of a meal all in there, anyone can just open the jars and heat and eat.

Of course, being in the middle of the country, I had to buy all my good Okanagan fruit at the grocery stores, but I still miss it...in particular good Mac apples...those are hands down my faves for eating, saucing and pies. For some reason, they just don't carry them much here...maybe for a couple weeks a year and if I don't happen to get to the store when they're in, we miss out. We finally planted our own tree and are patiently waiting for some fruit. We put in a plum a couple years ago and harvested it for the first time a week or so ago...got enough for about a batch and a half of delicious jam. Funny...the batch I made last year never set...this one set hard as concrete, LOL....ours must have a lot more natural pectin than the ones I got last year.

We love salmon! Of course, there's no way to get it here other than to buy it, but I'm going to be keeping an eye out for sales and will plan to get a bunch when that happens and can it all. Sometimes I rather wish we lived near the ocean for goodies like that and for some good fresh seaweed.

 

[moolie]

Sometimes during busy canning season I feel like a kitchen slave, so "kitchen goddess" sounds extra nice today, thanks!

I totally hear you on the "not being near an ocean" for fish. I miss how my Mom would just go down to the docks and buy a couple of fish right off the boats whenever she wanted to, plus all the free fish we got from friends and neighbors when they had too much--one year our neighbor got the most enormous halibut and we got a huge chunk of it. I could eat halibut every day and not get tired of it, I think, but there's no point buying it here because it's just not fresh--so I only have it when we go to the coast (my brother and his family live near Vancouver).

Totally agree with you about how good McIntosh apples are--one of the two apple trees we planted in our yard last year is a "hardi-mac" and they've been wonderful (we actually got apples off it last year, although they were small--this year they are more normal sized).

There's actually a reason that they are not common in the stores anymore--grocery stores demand long-keeping apples and orchardists have begun to specialize in the long keeping/boring tasting varieties like Gala. The diversity of apples grown has gone way down over the last decade or so, and just like heirloom veggies it is up to those of us who care to continue the (now) rarer and tastier varieties by demanding that stores carry them, and by growing them ourselves.

I love plum jam--my Oma had plum trees and always made plum jam when I was growing up. She made a wonderful streusel cake with the jam that is so much a part of my childhood, I'm fortunate that she showed me how to make it (she never used a recipe so I had to watch and write it down myself as she went). But yeah, they can vary in pectin content--you need a few less ripe ones for a good set.

 

[Mickey328]

Having grown up on a lake, I reckon I had my fill of most of that kind of fish...I can take it or leave it now, LOL. Plus I've no idea how it would can...we always had it fresh or frozen. There's a lot of trout fishing goes on here but I'm not fond of trout. I do like halibut, swordfish, salmon and tuna...all far, far from our landlocked area here, LOL.

'tis true...Macs don't seem to keep well...they go mealy fairly quickly, but I'd rather have a mealy Mac than a crunchy no-taste of any other variety. There is a lot of fruit grown on the western slope here...they get all the rain over there. But they mostly concentrate on peaches, and I will admit...they're among the best I've ever tasted. They sell for (IMO) ridiculous amounts of money so it's no wonder nobody seems to grow much of any other kind of fruit other than cherries, which are also good but very pricey.

Other than black raspberry, plum jam is my fave too. I'm thinking I'll re-process what I already did and add in at least some of the leftover processed fruit....but not right away...got too much other stuff to do first and it's canned so it'll keep, LOL. Today is apple day, but first we're taking a run to the food bank to see what other goodies we might garner. Gotta go gather up the spare eggs now so we can donate them when we go.

 

[moolie]

Mmm, raspberry jam--I'm with you on that one as my fave as well!

 

[Mickey328]

Back from our "shopping" trip, LOL. Got some pretty wilty looking leaf lettuce, collards and chard for the chickens, lots of apples to can and a few fingerling potatoes...gonna try those and see how they go. Think I'll just scrub 'em and can 'em whole. Also got some nice sweet potatoes...might also check into canning some of those, and scrounged half cobs and otherwise not real good looking ears to dry for the chickens over the winter.

Red raspberry jam is good, but the black stuff...oh my...I'm crazy for that flavor! Up at the camp, we had wild raspberries and blueberries growing everywhere! Grandpa was crazy for the raspberry jam...he'd go through darn near a pint a week! Grandma made several batches for him every year. I'd love to do more of that sort of berries, but I've been so spoiled by the taste of the wild ones that the domesticated ones are sort of "blah" to me. We could grow raspberries here, but in our limited space, we've chosen to use what we have available for more productive crops. And...our soil is so alkaline it would be a HUGE chore to try blueberries.