Cook ingredients that you are used to cooking by other techniques, such as fish, chicken, or hamburgers. In other words be comfortable with the ingredients you are using.
--Bobby Flay
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Please watch this area for important information like updates, food recalls, polls, contests, coupons, and freebies.- [March 19, 2020] - Effective Mar 17, this blog will no longer accept advertising. The reason is very simple. If I like a product, I will promote it without compensation. If I don't like a product, I will have no problem saying so.
- [March 17, 2020] - A return to blogging! Stay tuned for new tips, resources and all things food related.
- [February 1, 2016] - An interesting report on why you should always choose organic tea verses non-organic: Toxic Tea (pdf format)
- Sticky Post - Warning: 4ever Recap reusable canning lids. The reports are growing daily of these lids losing their seal during storage. Some have lost their entire season's worth of canning to these seal failures! [Update: 4ever Recap appears to be out of business.]
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Canning is a year round activity here with the canner running at least once a week. I am in the midst of the busy canning season right now because this is the time of year local produce is being harvested. I am very blessed this year to have found a wonderful organic farm to supplement what I don't grow. The last visit there I asked them to call me when they had 20 lb of green beans. They called las Thursday so one of our kids picked them up for me.
We go through a lot of
canned green beans in a year. This year I am testing the
Tattler reusable canning lids. Now this in itself introduces a lot of stress because if there is anything I can't tolerate is food wastage. When it comes to canning there is a fair amount of work as well.
Pictured are the 7 L and 24 - 500 ml jars of green bean I canned. I did not crawl into bed until after 3 AM so it was a long night! The white lids are the new Tattler reusable canning lids. Of the Tattler lids I did have one seal failure but what I think I did was forget to tighten the ring after removing from the canner which is one reason why canning a 3 in the morning is not always the best idea. I have to save I am quite impressed with the Tattler lids so far. They take a bit of getting used to because the rubber ring is separate from the lid but the lids performed beyond expectation. It will take a bit of an adjustment to get used to the different look but that ok providing the lids work as promised. In this application sealing was not a problem and from experience green beans tend to be a bit problematic for canning. My first ages ago attempt resulted in buckled lids so this run (3 canner loads) was really problem free with no buckling of the metal lids and all but one lids sealing. It was a good and very encouraging but long canning session.
8 food lovers commented:
Buckled lids? Wow. Congrats on all the success here though, they look really good. :)
I love the pic of your green beans-all pretty in thier jars waiting to be used by your family. I wish I could get over my fear of canning and start doing it myself. I keep thinking I'll blow up my kitchen if I try..lol.
Hi Linda :) Thanks! I love looking at jars of home canned foods ready to restock the pantry.
Buckled lids can happen due to not leaving proper headspace, tightening the ring to tight and defective lids. The first run of green beans caught a package of defective lids or at least that is my theory since there were many reports that year of lids buckling. The buckling was mainly around the edges of the lid forming wrinkles in the metal. I ended up with a buckling rate of about 20% so was not impressed. That was right about the time they started reducing the weight of the metal lids slightly. The manufacturer is now phasing out the gold coloured lids for silver ones. There have been a lot of reports of higher seal failures with the silver lids although I have not experienced any myself yet. I suspect these thinner silver ones may also be prone to buckling but the main problem seems to be not enough plastisol resulting in less contact with the jar rim.
Hi Cassandrasmom :) Thanks so much! The newer pressure canners have a safety blowout so there isn't the danger of blowing up your kitchen. There is a learning curve to canning but the reward is amazing.
I went and bought a home canning kit....I hope to start today! I have tons of tomatoes so I am probably going to do salsa first then I'll go through your recipes that I have been reading forever to see what to do next. One question- once I have canned and have the goods on the shelf I know I have one year to eat them--is there any other thing that can happen to them that will make my family sick and how will I know if they are not safe to eat? Thank you
Congratulations on your new canning kit Cassandrasmom! With salsa in particular it is important to use a tried and tested safe recipe. The one on the National Center for Home Food Preservation in the sidebar will get you going. On the same site there is excellent safety information for you to read through. There is canning information on the canning page (tab) as well but I'm still working on it so you will get more info through the NCHFP site.
The recommendation is to use home canned products within a year however as long as the seal is intact the product remains safe. It will lose nutritional value. My rule of thumb is 2 years but some experienced canners will use considerably older food.
Most foods will be apparent if they are spoiled. The concern over botulism applies to low acid foods that are pressure canned because of that risk. Tomatoes and tomato products should be acidified as per the instructions on the canning information page. If you see any signs of mold, foaming or the lid loses its seal then don't consume the product.
Oh my gosh! In my haste to reply I forgot to wish you good luck. I hope to read all about your first canning adventure and many more to come. Please let me know how you liked your first canning session.
Thank you so much for the help and support. I have not canned yet but hope to do so today. I am the caretaker of my mom so some days I don't have much time depending on what kind of day she has.
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