What are you canning now?

[digitS']

Freezing not canning but there are a couple quarts of vegetable broth for the freezer.

I have said before that no bone leaves the house unboiled. Wish that it was always true with the rotisserie chicken DW likes to bring home. I should probably intercede more often but it is certainly true with beef bones.

The vegetable broth was a result of me discovering a nearly unused bunch of store-bought celery beginning to deteriorate in the fridge. Our celeriac doesn't have quite the same uses as celery. By fall, the thin stems are tough. The roots are starchy, altho with a celery flavor. So ... DW still buys celery? Well, we had lots of carrots and onions to go with it. Tablespoon of Maggi sauce, granulated garlic, fresh ground black pepper ... our house smelled wonderful!

Steve

 

[Crazy Gardner]

Finally got my canned goods organized. They were all spread out on the basement floor until this week. I walled off the end of my cold room to make a proper cold storage for the canning and potatoes/carrots. Took 3 days of pretty steady work, but I think it went well. I picked up a solid wooden door at the habitat for humanity store for a cool $25 last year and built a small wall, with the door in the middle. I had 2 plastic shelving units that just weren't up to the task of storing 80 or 90 jars. Wasn't cheap though, these shelves cost me north of $350 to build using just 2x4 pine and 5/8" plywood.
Even had room for all my empty jars and then some.
My trusty apprentice.

 

[flowerbug]

Finally got my canned goods organized. They were all spread out on the basement floor until this week. I walled off the end of my cold room to make a proper cold storage for the canning and potatoes/carrots. Took 3 days of pretty steady work, but I think it went well. I picked up a solid wooden door at the habitat for humanity store for a cool $25 last year and built a small wall, with the door in the middle. I had 2 plastic shelving units that just weren't up to the task of storing 80 or 90 jars. Wasn't cheap though, these shelves cost me north of $350 to build using just 2x4 pine and 5/8" plywood.
Even had room for all my empty jars and then some.
My trusty apprentice.

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lookin' good!

did you write on the lids when you canned them?

 

[ninnymary]

Looks so well and organized. Love that.

Mary

 

[Crazy Gardner]

lookin' good!

did you write on the lids when you canned them?

I did mostly, all except for some of the jams I made, which are now entitled "mystery Jams 1 & 2".

 

[Crazy Gardner]

Looks so well and organized. Love that.

Mary

Thanks again for the chili/salsa recipe and tips for success. I have almost 35 quarts of salsa in varying degrees of hotness on the shelves.

 

[flowerbug]

I did mostly, all except for some of the jams I made, which are now entitled "mystery Jams 1 & 2".

if this is your first year of major canning you can (no pun intended but i'll leave it alone ) just make sure next year to put the date on them or some code so you know when to get them used up by. some items will last quite a long time and others you'll probably want to use up in a year or two or three... i'm not really sure how much you know so i'm just putting this note here just in case.

 

[ducks4you]

Agreed. You can use jars that are older. I pulled a quart of tomatoes for this year's Salsa Party's chili from 2005. I ALWAYS give every jar the smell test. Funny, tomatoes start breaking down into juice after awhile. I Have rearranged my jars so that the oldest tomatoes are in front, newest in the back, so as to use them up. Also, the tomatoes that I have been canning since I brought in green ones to ripen have a number of almost ripe tomatoes in them. They smell fresh, But, not as ripe tomatoes do, so DH and I labelled them for bean making. We have found that soaking in tomatoes that have been run through a blender breaks down the beans faster. Since our recipes already call for tomatoes, you get even more tomato taste in the finished product.
I let DH help me by doing the labeling. When I am done canning, my labeling looks like a drunk person wrote it. He makes it neat and tidy. We use a fine point black sharpie. If you use a colored one or an ultra fine point it sometimes isn't readable after awhile.

 

[henless]

Potatoes. In the last 2 days, I've put up 42 qts of potatoes, which was 80 lbs. Thinking about putting up another 80 lbs after Thanksgiving.

@Crazy Gardner - Your pantry looks good!!

 

[6884]

Venison.....Grandson and I harvested a big nanny last week, that makes #3 for the year, saved the tenderloins, cut the rest up and stuffed her fat butt in a jar. I used the 38$ Presto I bought on clearance last year, Work great. Out of both rear hams and 1 shoulder we were able to get 12 pints and 1 quart jar.