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Thanks for the heads up.

I’m Southern Baptist. No matter what, I also believe we are headed for some tough times. Canning can be a tough thing sometimes. Better to know what you’re doing. Pressure can work good on some things - cold water boiling is good for some things. Best to do some research on how to proceed. Most folks have opinions either way. Just my opinion but dehydrate works well and when packed in vacuum pack, can keep for a long time. Just my opinion but canning can be good or bad depending on method and what you are canning.

I so agree about pressure canning.

I was traumatized by a blown pressure cooker gasket at a young age and have never forgotten. Also, I simply am not strong enough or tall enough to move a canner full of jars by myself, let alone even want to think about what I could do to my flat top range. I also have hardly any space available for jar storage, at this point.

I dehydrate almost everything, and use silicon moisture absorbers in each 8 oz package that is vacuum packed. In 3 years, I had one package that developed a tad of mold. I just washed it off and then re-dried the entire package and the second time was a charm.

I do freeze tomato puree. I measure it into double freezer ziplocks and freeze them flat on a cookie sheet. They store well in a small amount of space and defrost quickly. We have pretty much decided that a generator, a series of blue top marine batteries and an inverter are what we will use to keep the freezers going if we lose power for long enough in summer. We could utilize a solar charger, but sun is so iffy here and we are in a North-facing valley, to boot.

A couple of years ago, we had damaging floods and the power was out for 4-5 days or so. The phone company moved a generator down by a transfer station and we had phone service back faster than we had power. We store gas, but our next genny upgrade will be to a propane system.

Like cooking, canning just takes
some practice.

I typically can about 50-80 cases,
depending on needs.

Also dehydrate and freeze.

Best advice is to follow approved
guidelines:

USDA Home Canning Guide,1994 (latest version)
Intro and Table of Contents
Principles of Home Canning
Fruit and Fruit Products
Tomatoes and Tomato Products
Vegetables and Vegetable Products
Poultry, Red Meats, and Seafood
Fermented Foods and Pickled Vegetables
Jams and Jellies
Download Entire File (5.6MB)

Enjoy!

Canning can be a tough thing sometimes. Better to know what you’re doing.

As an expert canner (I've been canning now about.....a month.....), I'd say it is quite an enjoyable hobby!

It did intimidate the heck out of me at first. I bought my canner on Amazon. And kept it in the box. Took it out after a week or two and read the instructions and looked it over. Then, put it back in the box. I had read DelaWhere's info on canning and felt overwhelmed and out of my league.

I finally decided to put my fear aside and try the darned thing. I had visions of my kitchen covered with chicken pieces (my first attempt was to can chicken breasts). Miraculously, that didn't happen and all seemed to work out as planned. And I found myself actually enjoying the process with my 2nd attempt. The 'ping' the jars make as they cool and the lids get sucked down tight onto the jars is about the prettiest noise I've heard lately (other than my cats' purring). It is the colmination of a deed well done. And actually, the stuff I've tried thus far from my jars - chicken, round steak, peaches, and peach preserves - has been quite tasty.

Anyway, the initialze intimidation I can relate to! But persevere if you have an interest - you might be surprised.