canning today

well today has been a day where I am starting to a bit of canning for the winter. I am going old school on my canning and am doing a bath boil canning method. this can be very risky if not done right but I have had success with it in previous years.

we are doing a pasta sauce today we love a hot pasta meal int eh cold winter months and the jars we buy are about 650g and does not seem to feed our family of 5 so I have opted to can a 1 ltr jar for each meal. so the process goes we prepared all the ingredients for the sauce which we are keeping basic so we can add things to it as we want variety at the meal time. we cooked everything up in a huge container and then set it off to cool a bit.

 I have the jars all set up and then we had to sterilize them so into a large bath of boiling water for 15 mins lids jars  everything. we remove them with sterile tongs and place them on a cool rack. after they are all set up we then fill the jars with whatever it is we are canning and then seal them close with the sterle lids. we then put the back into the boiling water all sealed for another 15- 18 minutes

we want to make sure they boiled long enough to produce a really good seal so we do not kill ourselves with bacteria LOL (always a good thing). and then we take them out and put them on the table to sit for 24 hours with out being touched to help promote a good seal.

so this is all we are doing today as it has been nasty weather out for 2 days the power has been going on and off so I am not really keen on doing anything that may spoil for us I may start though putting together my cake mix recipes for storage. I am going to put together the dry ingredients seal them in a container and then put instructions on the bag to what liqued ingredients we will need to add. another way of getting ready for the winter. We are getting so busy here finding ways to make our lives easier is essential but I am trying to do the quick meals still as organic and homemade as possible. I will later make some jam from the fruit we have been picking over the last week. I am trying to make enough jam for 1 jar per day so yes that is alot of jars LOL.but again it will save me money as each jar bought from the store (a little one) is about $5.00 and for $5.00 I can make at least 6 large ones.

so I will start with a nectarine jam from store bought fruit.

here is a run down of a chart for warm bath canning . but because everything I am canning is going to be boiled after( like carrots or asparagus etc) I  am happy to go old school canning

The Following Foods are Most Suitable for Canning by this Process:

Time of Cooking* - Minutes
Apples..............	.20-30
Apricots ............	16
Blackberries, dewberries.	16
Cherries .............	16
Elderberries ..........	16
Fruit-juices ..........	. 20
Grapes..............	16
Huckleberries ........	16
Peaches . . . . ........	20
Pears ................	20-30

Time of Cooking* - Minutes
Peppers ..............	30
Pineapples..........................	120
Plums ...............	16'
Quinces......................	60
Raspberries ...........	16
Rhubarb .............	16
Saurekraut.................	60
Tomatoes......................	30
tomato-juice.......................	20

Acid Used with The Following Foods Helps to Insure Success and Safety. (See page 660)

Asparagus ............	90
Beans, string .........	90
Beets ................	90
Carrots ..............	90

Corn, whole grain .....	90
Okra ................	90
Peas .................	90
Spinach and other greens	90

If the Hot-Water Bath, without Acid, Is Used for Canning the Following Foods, It Is Safer to Boil the Food After Opening the Can:

Asparagus ............	180
Beans, string..........	180
Beans, lima ...........	180
Beets ................	120
Carrots ..............	120
Cauliflower ...........	120
Corn ................	180

Greens, spinach, etc.....	180
Okra ................	120
Peas .................	180
Pumpkin .............	240
Squash	180
Vegetable combinations. .	180
Meat ................	300

our cvhickens have not been laying as well as planned due to the storm making everyone crazy but so far we have got about 2 dozen eggs. with the power outage we lost the first batch of incubating eggs but we have the next batch ready to go as soon as the power stops fluctuating