"Stocking Up Challenge" Vacuum Sealing and Canning

When it comes to stocking up, no matter if you are a newbie, worrier or brave, you NEED to look into buying a vacuum sealer, pressure canner and Lots of jars and lids!

I have used several different brands of vacuum sealers and they all work pretty well. You can buy them online and at wal-mart and a lot of other stores.

I recommend buying rolls of the vacuum sealer bags, online at ebay. You can get 4 Big rolls for around $60 (shipping and all). And that is enough bags to pack several hundred pounds of food, etc!

When buying a canner, look for the All American canners! We have found them on ebay. We have the 15 1/2 quart, which holds 7 quart jars or 10 pints.

And for canning jars, I recommend having at least 300 jars on hand. And at least twice that amount of lids.

I think everyone should have around 1,000 jars, but for some reason people are just not like they use to be, or need to be.

Use to be, you were crazy if you did not have all this stuff stocked up for your family, and now they think you are crazy if you do!

Who cares?

I would rather have it and not need it, then need it and not have it!

Canning Pear Butter Autumn 2010

Back in Sep. (2010), some friends brought us two five gallon buckets of pears from their trees!! Yay!
I decided to try making pear butter to can, instead of canning sliced pears!

Here are my notes on how I made the pear butter and some pictures for you!

After peeling and slicing the pears, I put them in my Ninja food processor (pictured above) and pureed them.
From the two five gallon buckets of pears, I pureed and measured up 14 qts. of pears into my large pot (pictured above).
I added 14 cups of brown sugar and about 3/4 cup of lemon juice, 2 TBSP. of nutmeg and 2 TBSP. of cinnamon. I cooked and stirred this for about an hour and a half (until it was heated all the way thru and bubbling!). Then I measured into jars and processed about 20 minutes for quart jars and 10 minutes for pints, in boiling water canner.

The pear butter taste SOOO yummy! I am a Huge fan of apple butter so I was delighted to make a bunch of pear butter!

The only thing I would do different is put less nutmeg and more cinnamon! Maybe 1 tablespoon of nutmeg and 3 tablespoons of cinnamon! =)

I hope I am able to can more apples and pears or apple & pear butter this year!

~Hannah

Canning Pork Roast

CANNING PORK ROAST

Last week, King Ed brought home two huge packages of pork roast (two large boston butt pork roast in each pack), from the store. He said one was $14 and the other was $12, so he could not pass them up.
It was a good week to can, since we were in between just finishing Kindergarten and starting 1st Grade!
Here is the first roast. Remember there were 4 of these to do!

Two bowels Full! Yippee!

I had to cut out a lot of fat. If I had been making sausage, I would have left more of it, but for canning chunk meat, I cut a lot out. Here was the bowel of fat and the 4 bones, one out of each roast.

Everything you need for canning meat!

I use sea salt.

And the rubbing alcohol is for cleaning the rims of the jars before I put the seals and rings on. My husband says he grandmother did this. I do this when canning meat to make sure the rims are extra clean!

Here are the 16 quarts with the meat in them, and 1 tsp. of salt in each, ready for seals and rings and to go into the canners.

Since the meat was cool, I bring my canners up very slow. Takes a while, but I do not want to crack any jars!

Since I had 16 quarts, I put 6 in each canner the first round and then I ran the last four after those were done.

I ran each canner 1 hour and 30 mins. on 10 lbs. pressure.

Here are the finished jars! Yum! It smelt so good when I opened the canners!

And below is a close-up!

All said and done it was a productive day! Especially if you consider that I did some house cleaning, and cooked a huge supper of sausage, gravy, biscuits, fried eggs and hash browns, etc! =)

Canning Apples...Part Two, And Finished!

Well, I worked up the last of the apples, yesterday and finally have them all canned! PTL!

Here is the picture of before I started the peeling and slicing! This time I peeled and sliced most of them, before I started the cooking. That way, I was not having to stop and peel/slice more while my canner was not quite full! That worked a lot better.

I took a picture of the apples cooking in the syrup this time!

The apples float to the top as it cooks and it will run over if too full, once it starts to boil! It does not take long for the apples to get hot and soft too, so this part goes fast!

Finished! Yippee!

Canned 17 qts. yesterday so that brings us up to 36 qts!!

That gives us a lot of apple pies over the year!

Wow! We got more then I thought we would! Must be because we canned almost every apple, instead of eating a bunch!

I hope a lot of other people canned a bunch of apples this Fall.

God Bless!

Canning Apples...Part One!

Okay, I think this is my first step-by-step blog post! Yippee! And sad since I have almost 200 blog post! Oh well!

As I mentioned, the other day, we went and picked up two bushel boxes of Gala apples! So yesterday, I canned a bushel of them! It took most of the noon and afternoon, since I did them by myself and had to do other things along, of course, but they turned out very pretty and I am soo happy to have that many done, and to think I have about that many more to can! Praise the Lord!

The apples before I started:

I just washed them off in the sink, (since I was going to peel and boil them)
The peeling and slicing by hand took the longest, since I do not have one of those neat cutters, or and Apple Peeler/Corer/Slicer!

Well, at least I only had two bushels! =)

The clean jars and lids, and some apples in the jars, as I filled them:

I some how forgot to take a picture of the apples boiling in the Extra-Light syrup! Sorry! But you can see the pans in the picture above! I followed the Ball Blue book, of course, but used less sugar then they said, and lemon juice to help keep them from turning so brown!

The apples in the hot water bath:

The finished/cooled jars of apples!

Uh, and here is what is left to do! =) Not quite another bushel, so hope to get at least 14 (+?) more!

I hope to have another post as a follow-up, after I am done with all of them! Hope that will be soon!

God bless!