WHAT ARE YOU CANNING TODAY?

[FarmerJamie]

14 pints of baked beans in the canner now. I don't think the wife can do the spice on the charo beans.

I love this new burner.

We had bought a 7 lb package of brown sugar. I broke that bag down into 2 cup (bean recipe), 1 cup, and 1/2 cup bags and vacuum sealed. We don't use it often, so I wanted to see if I could stretch our the freshness

 

[frustratedearthmother]

14 pints of baked beans in the canner now. I don't think the wife can do the spice on the charo beans.

Love some baked beans! I need to do some more of those.

DH would love me to put a bunch of spice in the charro beans but I tend to adjust them to MY comfort level. He can always add more spice to his, lol.

 

[frustratedearthmother]

Think I'll do some lima beans with ham today. I thawed out a chunk for the charro beans and didn't use it all so...

 

[FarmerJamie]

 

[frustratedearthmother]

Those look delicious!

Took me all day to get to it - but finally have those limas in the canner.

 

[flowerbug]

...
We had bought a 7 lb package of brown sugar. I broke that bag down into 2 cup (bean recipe), 1 cup, and 1/2 cup bags and vacuum sealed. We don't use it often, so I wanted to see if I could stretch our the freshness

i've heard about the piece of bread trick (perhaps a bit of sponge instead would be more sterile, but really for us brown sugar doesn't last very long around here between my sweet tooth and Mom's baking - we buy packages of brown sugar 7lbs at a time - we probably shop at the same big box club store...) and a friend gave Mom a bag of rock hard brown sugar that i'm just going to use in a garden as fertilizer. bury it and call it done.

 

[Hinotori]

Put it in a bowl with a damp paper towel over and microwave for 20 seconds at a time, checking for softness.

I keep mine in airtight containers so it rarely hardens any

 

[Finnie]

Goodwill in my area raised the price of their jars to $.99. Absolutely insane. Now I get them at estate sales, on the LAST day, for 50 cents or less. I also have no qualms buying old boxes of lids. There is more red rubber on those older lids than nowadays.

Our goodwills around here raised their price to 1.99 per quart jar!! Just not worth it! I can’t imagine WHO is paying that! And they stopped doing the color of the week, so no more half off stuff.

I have got to start going to estate sales. Whenever I see one I’m usually just too busy to stop. Even if I plan ahead to find them, I just never seem to feel like scheduling it in. Or I don’t feel like driving that far. But your posts have really made them seem like a good idea.

 

[Finnie]

I’m doing another marathon of broth. Beef this time. On Easter I was in Meijer and found a prime rib roast marked down to $7/#! (And also a marked down brisket, but in retrospect it wasn’t that great a mark down.)

Between both pieces there was a lot of fat, so I tried my hand at rendering some.

Interesting experience, but I don’t think I’d do it again unless I had a big boat load of fat. Plus, I’m not in the habit of cooking with tallow, so I guess I’ll find out if it’s even something I want to have around.

The prime rib roast was going bad so I had to use it right away. I actually had to cut out a lot of grey meat. So I rescued all the fat that I could and got that going, and then I cut up all the good meat and slow cooked it for dinner (it was Tuesday by this point.) And then I love how they “French” the roast, so it was super easy to just put the bone piece in my countertop oven and roast it a couple hours and then right into the 12 quart slow cooker overnight with veggies, seasoning, water. (Oh, and I ate the awesome meat from between the bones for my lunch- that didn’t need to go in the soup! )

But it was only 3 bones, so I dug all my other beef bones out of the freezer and thawed them in the fridge overnight. (Learned my lesson with the turkey bones not to put them in frozen and trust that they haven’t spoiled!)
Next morning the 3 bones had made some awesome broth that I canned up, and then I added the thawed beef bones (two years in freezer for some and still smelled good) topped it off with water and let that slow cook until the canner was ready to run a second batch.

That second batch is a little lighter in color but rich enough. Topped the pot up with more water and let that slow cook overnight again and this morning’s batch of broth is dark and rich again. I started earlier today, so I think I can get 3 canner loads run before bedtime. Third batch might be getting weak, we shall see. But whatever’s left, topped up again and cooked one more night ought to give me one more rich canner load on Friday.

My MIL thinks it’s too much work, but I really am having fun with this. Only thing is, I need to go buy two more packages of pint jars! (I don’t like to do beef in quarts so I’ve used up all my regular pint jars.)

 

[Mini Horses]

I still have empty jars well stocked up on lids. Two days ago I find a Craigslist add for jars. Followed up and am buying 108, mostly WM qts. Will pick up next weekend when I'll be going to the spring Gilmanor swap. It's 110 miles there but only 15 min from those jars!! Sooo, I've now bought "Xtra" because the store prices are going out of control. These will aver 40 cents each. I like pints (have a lot of them) for many things since I'm only one to cook for in the house but price is right. Veggies in qts just means use in multi meals that week.

We canners are not all sane just frugal & chem free.