Posted on 08/19/2011 5:01:37 AM PDT by Red_Devil 232
what about the cost of lids?....seems to be high this year.....
Yep, and less quantity per box where I buy ‘em. Just a dozen. I use coupons, but they only come out maybe, two times seasonally now.
We get the coupon insets from several family members who don’t use them, and buy a bunch at a time.
The rings seem really flimsy the past few years too. I’ve been trying to find better quality, but no luck so far.
I’m feeling the itch to stockpile the little suckers.
I love your story and I am awed at your butter beans.
At home here the excitement is that my son from S. Carolina is coming to visit this week. Unfortunately he is coming alone because the kids have already started school. He’s coming expressly to help his dad “get the house ready for winter”. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that winter isn’t here yet and we haven’t totally gotten the house UNwinterized from last year! In any case there is plenty of work to be done around here — tasks that never seem to get completed.
He’s staying FOUR days to help us out without wife and children to distract. He’s doing this as a mercy mission because of his dad’s operation last winter. My husband is doing fine — just a little tired — but we really appreciate the help and are making lists of tasks to work on.
BUT (and this is the important part) this will give me a chance to talk to him about his wife’s canning. This will be a touchy subject because we are not allowed to say anything negative about his dear, sweet wife (which would be hard to do, in any case). But she does not use a pressure cooker to can her veggies.
So, I’m in the market for a pressure cooker that he can bring home as a gift for her. What kind/brand/size do you recommend? The lives of my granchildren are at stake here! Suggesting a pressure cooker for her canning goes against several generations of tradition for her family. You can see how touchy this subject will be. Wish me luck and include this topic in your prayers, if you see fit.
God Bless the geese!
I know they are both Classy in the literal sense but I did ask JADB if she was related to our infamous classygreeneyedblonde 2 years ago
True, and that’s where I think I saw some, too. If I were going into it in a big way, I’d try to find a source and buy in quantity, but I doubt I will. I can’t really think of anything to improvise with, but if push came to shove, I bet you could launder it and get a couple more uses out of it, even though it would be stained.
I don't know if it would work with pod beans, depends on growing time.
I spray foliars when I get around to it of kelp diluted in a pump sprayer, supposed to be good for plants. Only spray on an overcast or cloudy day. If you don't have clouds or overcast because of drought, it's not going to work, and it's probably not a good idea to spray in the cool of the evening. It's organic so don't have to worry about kids, pets, etc.
I never transplant on sunny days, wait for cloudy or overcast, although if they're already in the sun and in cell packs or other container, might not hurt, still would try not to do it.
Reading this thread makes me glad I'm a hoarder as I've been accused of being, certainly not as bad as what I saw on ABC within the past couple weeks. I have lots of canning rings and supplies.
I was watching a woman can milk on a YT video. Her canner was tall, a pressure canner, of course, and she got two layers of pints in it.
Thanks for the recommendation. I’ll look into it. I think I’ll have it shipped. Too big for the plane.
I messed up my cherry jam last year despite following the directions to a “T”. It never did thicken, so I re-named it “Black Cherry Sauce” and served it over ice cream. It was a hit.
My pressure cooker is an old (from the 70's I believe) Mirro 22-quart aluminum one with the heavy metal weight that jiggles when the pressure is right. I like it because you don't have to visually monitor the canner -- you can tell it is right if you are anywhere within earshot. Also, a weight never needs repair -- it is a hunk of metal. Low maintenance canner and I replace the gasket every couple of years. I love this canner.
Having said that, I have been shopping around on the net for a second pressure cooker because I do so much canning that 7 qts. at a time takes its toll and slows me down, so I need 2 units running at the same time.
Here are the 3 units that I have narrowed down to:
Mirro 22-Quart Polished Aluminum Pressure Cooker/Canner I like this model a lot, but it only handles 5 qt. jars at a time because it is designed in a smaller footprint to better match element size on stoves. I have a ceramic cooktop and my old Mirro is quite a bit wider than the size of my elements. For someone that doesn't do a great deal of canning, I think it would be a great choice and the price is very good. It has a jiggler, but a newer design.
Presto 1781 23-Quart Aluminum Pressure Cooker/Canner I like this one too, but it has a gauge instead of the jiggler, so that is a strike against it for me, but it is still a nice canner at a really good price.
Hawkins Bigboy Aluminum Pressure Cooker/Canners I would choose this one in the 22 litre size. This is a very nice looking canner! It only has 1 reviewer, so I have to do a little more research and find some more reviews. It is priced a little higher, but not so much that I would take it out of the running.
That is my $0.02 on the canner question. Sorry for the long length. :)
I am so glad to hear that your son will be visiting and helping out. Hopefully you will get some quality time together.
Your needs are always in my prayers. Take care!
My mother used to make kumquat preserves which were always a hit. Those aren't native here and have to be trucked in from the west coast.
I think if it comes to TEOTWAWKI, we will not be so inclined to make the sweet stuff but concentrate on survival preservation unless you have extra energy. Years ago, women sometimes used to get together and do this sort of thing, not go it all alone like my mother did and then me. I have 2 daughters. Finally my eldest has gotten into gardening, but mostly pickles.
My mom would let me cook when she didn't need to be in the kitchen. She never wanted help (except setting the table and dishes), wanted to do every procedure of the cooking herself. That made me kind of like that. I ended up having to teach myself how to can from her canning books I inherited after she departed this world.
Another nice thing to can for is pie fillings. Most fruits and rhubarb are better frozen, but I never had the luxury of a freezer other than what's part of my fridge so I can't freeze or buy meat ahead as much as I'd like.
Drainage and pH are both issues. I purposely built my house on a caliche rock plate and the plants are next to the house. I have been mulching the plants in an effort to build up the soil base and lower the high pH (8-8.5). I was also thinking that the lime leaching out of the concrete might be an issue, but again, some plants are ffected, and others show no problem. It was the suddenness and seeming selectiveness that confuses me, especially since it is confined to a small area.
For those who are interested and can watch a 3 minute video, I'm attaching a You Tube that was partly filmed around here. About the 2 minute part are scenes from the annual Cedarburg 4th of July parade. Every little town around here has a parade on the 4th and several other days throughout the year too. But the 4th is the most popular -- so much that they have to get together to see who gets which day. My town (Mequon) always has their parade the week before the 4th so they don't conflict. The farming neighborhood where I live (Freistadt) has the 4th at noon reserved. It's a little parade. Cedarburg (adjoining my rear property line, but not where I live -- just close) always has 10 AM on the 4th. Grafton, 3 miles up the road, marches on the Sat., or Sun., nearest to the 4th.
The parades are a real slice of Americana and fit well with Toby Keith's lyrics in this song. I don't know who the farmer and his wife are. They could be from some other part of the country, but the parade scenes are from right here.
It's too bad they didn't film the Golden Retrievers. They always feature one unit in the parade composed just of Goldens -- about 100 of them in every shade you can imagine.
I think that it is a shame that other places in the US don't even have 4th of July parades any more. My grandkids come all the way from Virginia to see ours. Virginia, the cradle of our nation!
Sorry about the ad. It's short.
BTW, that church steeple you see in the background in one of the parade scenes is our church, St. Francis Borgia. It’s around 2:40.
I messed up a beautiful raspberry batch last year - it didn’t set.
If I had been SMART I would have done the same thing you did, but noooo, I tried the directions to re-do the batch to make it set. I do not recommend doing this - it can out gummy and ruined the flavor. I threw it all away.
In the future, any soft set jams or jelly are “sauce”! I’d rather have a delicious sauce, than a tasteless gummy jelly any day.
I’ve been reading through the customer comments on the canners you linked. What a hoot! The manufacturers should take them seriously because it sounds like all of the companies need to provide better instructions — or a customer hot line. Entertaining reading, however!
LOLOLOL!
Did you ever read the book "The Kumquat Statement?" It was a political treatise that I read many years ago when I lived in Bezerkley, CA and had kumquat trees coming up everywhere that somebody spit a seed. The author's premise was that Berkeley attracted so many radicals because they thought that they could come there and live off the street (because the climate was mild), camping in the bushes and eating kumquats and loquats that grew everywhere and were free for the taking.
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