Can I Finish Thy Love Divine Tonight?

Almost 7:00 p.m. and I’m just ready to start stitching. Got the ground beef canned, sheets washed and lunch cooked, cleaned up and leftovers in the freezer.

The biggest project was getting the ground beef canned. I love canning and would do it every day but . . don’t need that much canned food.

We use so many jars of canned ground beef and I was very hesitant to try it. About nine pounds of frozen ground beef filled 12 pint jars – and our tubes aren’t very exact. We get it direct from the farmer and it’s sometimes a bit more and sometimes a bit less so I figure it averages out to about a pound – doesn’t matter too much to me. That means each pint has about 3/4 pound of meat in it.

I sometimes can it in quarts but at least 75% of the ground beef I can goes into pints. Having canned ground beef is nice for those days when we need something to eat fairly quickly or I’m not wanting to spend hours in the kitchen. Here are some of the things I can do with it. The first thing I do is drain the meat and usually let the meat sit a few minutes on paper towels. There’s usually a layer of grease on top in the jar and I scrape that off and toss it. If I’m going to brown the meat before using, I’ll do that with a bit of oil – sometimes lard, sometimes olive oil – whatever is handy. Since the meat is already cooked, it takes just a second to brown it up.

• Our version of nachos – I’ll use the potatoes I’ve canned, drain them, spritz them with a bit of olive oil, season them and stick them in the air fryer to get the brown and a bit crispy on the edges. Season the ground beef with whatever seasonings you’d like. I sometimes use taco seasoning, sometimes Cajun seasoning. Place the meat on top of the potatoes, add sour cream and/or salsa, black olives, chopped onions, cilantro – whatever you want to add.
• Stuffed baked potatoes – Once the potatoes are baked, scoop out the good stuff, mix it with browned ground beef, grated cheese, sour cream, chopped onions, chopped jalapeno peppers – whatever you want. Re-fill the potato shells, stick under the broiler for a minute or two.
• Taco Salad
• Tacos
• Pull Apart Patty Melt Sliders
• Sloppy Joes – you can add the sauce to the jars but we like to can the sauce separately.

I did take 9 more pounds out to can. That should be defrosted (in the fridge) by Thursday or Friday and I’ll get it canned. That should give us 24 pints and that will get us through the summer. I’d rather can in the fall or winter when I’m not so busy with the garden but I needed to make room in the freezer so getting 18 pounds of ground beef out has helped . . a little.

And, because the canner will hold 16 pints, and I had 12 pints of ground beef, I stuck 4 pints of black beans in the canner to fill it up.

Now .. I’m going to start stitching and hope I can finish Thy Love Divine tonight.