Home Canning

[JEBar]

it seems from looking at the large number of restaurants in our area that home cooking is losing ground to eating out .... take that one step further and I tend to believe (at least in our area) home canning is becoming a lost art .... we used to raise a big ( 1 acre + ) garden but with spending the summers out west in our camper, for us those days are gone .... what works for us is to buy White Half Runner green beans, tomatoes, and cucumbers at the farmer's market and can them .... my family is from the mountains of NC and raised White Half Runner green beans .... they are old line string and snap beans and to me, when I sit down to eat green beans, if it ain't a White Half Runner, I'm really not interested .... we have come to put where we put up 2 bushels (56 quarts) a year ..... unfortunately, none of the farmer's markets in our areas carry them and closest we can find is in Asheville (a 500+ mile round trip) .... with my Mom in a nursing home in Asheville, we them up when we go up for a visit .... yesterday was such a day .... got home around 5PM spent the evening stringing and snapping .... from the bushel we bought we put 7 gallons in the frig over night and are now in the process of canning them .... we anticipate getting about 28 quarts .... that should keep well stocked until time to can more next year .... in addition to green beans next wee we plan go to the Raleigh Farmer's Market and get tomatoes and cucumbers by the bushel .... below are a few pictures

[PT7]

Beautiful canning harvest; the veggie colors even look tasty. Reminds everyone that the harvest season is ramping up to full swing.
I especially love fresh market tomatoes! My Mom used to pluck one out of her garden, and eat it like an apple.

Sharp-looking knife is nicely placed, and it did a good job on those cukes!

[Deadwood Dutch]

That is a beautiful amount of canning and I agree that you don't have many of the younger people doing much canning anymore. But the Amish people will always do it and we have many Amish farms with beautiful gardens, in our area. We used to can beans and tomatoes from our small garden but nothing like my grandmother did back in the 50's because she had a very large garden behind her house. She had a dirt floor in the cellar and she had the wooden shelves that lined the walls with canned vegetables. But I still love to go to the farmers market. We used to make homemade applesauce and freeze it and it sure tasted good in the winter, or anytime for that matter. But it is a lot of work, especially turning the foley mill, and with our aches and pains we have given up on that also. She still cuts corn off the cob after it is boiled and freezes it but that's about it.

[JEBar]

in thinking about it, for us it, part taste and part tradition .... canned/frozen veggies are a far cry in quality and taste from where they were 50 years ago .... that said, we haven't found any commercially available beans with the taste we prefer .... nor tomatoes with the combination of taste and low acid .... the pickles are my grandmother's recipe .... they have a unique hot dill taste that is unequaled .... years ago when my wife was working with some church and later 4H girls clubs they put them in the NC State Fair and won ribbons .... its most certainly easier to buy than home can but we will continue to do so for as long as we are able

[CT_Shooter]

Awesome job, JEBar.

It seems like a good deal of each day is spent processing food at our house, too. We've been freezing the strawberries, blackberries and green beans from our garden. We wash them, dry them in a single layer in the fridge, then freeze them in a single layer before bagging them. We freeze our peaches whole, but we can apples and applesauce. We grow tomatoes, too, and we usually can them whole, but this year we've decided to just make some large batches of sauce and can that instead.

We make pickles with dill, a whole cayenne pepper, and few cloves of chopped garlic, but we keep them in the fridge instead of canning. We grow all of these ingredients ourselves. I go through them pretty quickly and have friends that count on getting a few jars every season. I'll be putting up a few more jars today. I'd love to know your grandmother's recipe.

It's a good feeling to eat and to share what we've grown in the yard throughout the year.

[RetiredSeabee]

Looks delicious, my Grandmother was a great canner. She had a cellar full of everything you can put in a jar. Her peace he's were always as fresh as if they just came off the tree.
One summer when I was 15 she came up from the cellar with a jar of corn that she put up on the day I was born. It was crisp and delicious.

[JEBar]

Awesome job, JEBar.

It seems like a good deal of each day is spent processing food at our house, too. We've been freezing the strawberries, blackberries and green beans from our garden. We wash them, dry them in a single layer in the fridge, then freeze them in a single layer before bagging them. We freeze our peaches whole, but we can apples and applesauce. We grow tomatoes, too, and we usually can them whole, but this year we've decided to just make some large batches of sauce and can that instead.

We make pickles with dill, a whole cayenne pepper, and few cloves of chopped garlic, but we keep them in the fridge instead of canning. We grow all of these ingredients ourselves. I go through them pretty quickly and have friends that count on getting a few jars every season. I'll be putting up a few more jars today. I'd love to know your grandmother's recipe.

It's a good feeling to eat and to share what we've grown in the yard throughout the year.

strawberry season ended before we headed west for the summer .... my wife froze a bunch of them ..... we don't do much with other types of berries .... she does make strawberry jelly and a topping for pancakes that's a big hit with the kids

[JEBar]

Looks delicious, my Grandmother was a great canner. She had a cellar full of everything you can put in a jar. Her peace he's were always as fresh as if they just came off the tree.
One summer when I was 15 she came up from the cellar with a jar of corn that she put up on the day I was born. It was crisp and delicious.

I have similar memories of my grandmother's cellar with shelves full of all types of fruits, berries and veggies .... I particularly remember her canned peach halves, nothing sweeter ..

[daytime dave]

My grandmothers both canned. My mother canned. I can from time to time. I'll can anything with my pressure canner. It's becoming a lost art. Get the Ball canning book. It's loaded with jewels of canning.

[Dennis H]

I've been canning alot of meat the past couple years. Elk, deer, geese, old laying hens. You can get a whole boned chicken in a quart jar! Great for soups, stews, casseroles . No refrigeration and a long shelf life!

[daytime dave]

I'm looking forward to canning meat when I start hunting in earnest. I attended a bonfire in Tupper Lake where canned venison was featured. Mmmmm.

[Dennis H]

Bout as tender as it gets, and you can infuse it with anything, as spicy as you like! Would love to try a mess a rabbits or squirrels. Fall off the bone yummy I'm guessin!

[bandit1250]

Bout as tender as it gets, and you can infuse it with anything, as spicy as you like! Would love to try a mess a rabbits or squirrels. Fall off the bone yummy I'm guessin!

Squirrels and rabbits are very tasty and always tender when canned. I can all my squirrels and rabbits and it makes no difference whether they were old squirrels or young ones they all come out of the jar very tender. Have to be careful taking them out of the jar or they will fall apart. Another reason I use large mouth quart jars. Easy to do. No salt or water to add when canning them. I always have a pretty good amount of squirrels in the jars. I found a jar in the rear that was from the around'94 or '96 a few months ago and my wife fixed them and they were as good as if I just had gotten them. I ate the whole jar for lunch and supper. Most of the ones pictured are from 2012 when I had a lot of time to hunt and had a great season with well over a hundred squirrels that fall. I gave the ones I canned the last two seasons to my friend to make his squirrel gravy with. They make really good gravy and he makes a bunch of it and splits it with me and my wife freezes it to have some later on.

[Dennis H]

Thanx for the confirmation bandit! I've been covered up in cottontails since the mange took out the coyotes. I'm gonna bottle a pile of this fall!

[JEBar]

another year, another day spent canning green beans .... yesterday (Sunday) we made our monthly drive from home to Asheville in the mountains of Western NC to visit with my mom in her retirement home .... as noted early on in this thread, I was raised eating old fashion White Half Runner green beans .... to me, they taste the way a green bean should taste .... unfortunately we can't raise them at home, its just too hot .... there is a farmer who has a stand in Asheville's Farmer's Market who does a good job of raising them ... we call him a few days in advance and he has a couple of just picked bushels of them read for us when we get there .... other than selling our daughter's 2001 Tahoe, I've spent the day stringing and snapping .... my wife has spent the day canning them .... 58 quarts and 18 pints later, we are done processing green beans for another year .... we do have a few jars left from last year so to make sure we use them first, my wife dates all of our jars .... no need to put up pickles this year but we will be processing tomatoes pretty soon .... for something new, we are looking forward to putting up some Chow-Chow Relish using an old family recipe

[JEBar]

2017, phase 2 .... first run of tomatoes .... about 3/4's of a bushel .... my wife plans to do many more next week

[daytime dave]

They look great.

[JEBar]

They look great.

they taste even better ....

[JEBar]

my wife hopes to put up several more boxes of tomatoes this week and to move to Chow-Chow next week


for folks from north of the Mason-Dixon who may not be familiar with Chow-Chow :

http://www.armadillopeppers.com/Chow-Chow_Relish.html

http://www.mtnlaurel.com/recipes/752-so ... elish.html

my wife will be using a 50+ year old family recipe that was created by my Dad's only sister

[daytime dave]

Being pretty north of that line, I will admit to hearing about it, but never tasting it. Just not a staple here. It sounds good as described.