There are a often posts I write and then decide not to publish because I feel like some are going to see it as virtue signaling or “I do better than you do” and that’s never ever what I intend. Even when I write a post like this, please know that I do sometimes buy canned beans; we do eat out occasionally. We could do a lot better in so many areas of our lives but . . we don’t always do it! And, there is nothing wrong with eating out or buying all the food from the store if that’s ok with you. I do not judge but, probably I wish too much that folks would try to grow their own and can their own but I fully understand it isn’t always possible and isn’t always desirable.
On today’s menu is soup and Frito Taco Salad. Most of this meal will come from items I’ve canned:
- A jar of Aztec Chicken Soup I canned
- A jar of hominy I canned
- A jar of ground beef I canned (I don’t need a whole pound of ground beef for our salad and there’s about 3/4 pound of beef in one of the pint jars).
- A jar of pinto beans I canned
I rinsed what needed to be rinsed and got it all out on prep trays.
For anyone wondering, the canned ground beef is great. I like it better than starting from raw ground beef. The flavor and texture, in my opinion, is better. The only ground beef I prefer to keep in the freezer is what we will use for hamburgers and meatloaf.
The salad
recipe I’ve used previously called for a can of ranch style beans that have been rinsed. Why? That ends up just being pinto beans!
This morning while getting out the ingredients, I decided to check costs:
At our local Walmart, and prices in other areas may be different, a can of Great Value pinto beans is 86 cents per can. A can of ranch style beans is $1.24 – same size can. I figure the cost of a pint of home canned pinto beans to be .50 per jar, also about the same size as the store bought cans. That’s a 36 cent savings per jar and we use at least 200 pints of canned beans per year because we have them almost every day. In fact, Vince asks for some kind of dry beans with EVERY meal. So, 200 pints at a savings of .36 per jar is $72 per year.
Yes, there’s the cost of propane, which I figure to be about $60 per year. Our two gas stoves are the only propane we use so it takes us about 5 years to use it down to 40% where we will meet the minimum (200 gallons) for the gas company to come out and fill the tank. I cook meals on the kitchen stove and can on the basement stove.
There is also the cost of the canner, the cost of the jars but I don’t even count any of those because so many of my jars I’ve had for 20 or more years and use them over and over. I may use and re-use the same jar four or five times per year. I do use a new lid every time but I still have lids I bought from the Amish when we lived in Nevada, MO 15+ years ago and they were way less than Walmart’s lids back then so I doubt I paid much more than 5 or 6 cents per lid back then. Same with the canner. I bought my big All American from Amazon in 2012 when we we moved into the house in Texas and I finally had gas stove. I paid $299 for it then and thought I was spending a LOT of money. Now that same canner is $500. I guess I decided I needed to have two canners going so I bought a smaller one, also in 2012 for $175 and it is now $380.
There’s also this:
This is what’s in the store bought pinto beans. Mine have beans, water and salt.
For me, there’s also the time savings. Yes, a store bought can of beans is just as quick to use as a home canned jar of beans once it’s canned but being able to can 19 pints of beans in one canner load, that doesn’t take a lot of time. One week a month or so ago, I canned one load of beans every day for six days straight. I canned pinto, black beans, garbanzo beans, navy beans, cannellini beans (which I also will sometimes use in this salad) and black eyed peas. That added 114 pints of beans ready to heat and eat to my storage shelves.
Any time I am thinking that I’m too tired to cook, or I don’t want to stop stitching to take time to cook, I can go to the storage area, pull out cans of something and have a meal ready in less than half an hour . . which is about three times longer than it would take me to get presentable to go out to eat, drive to a restaurant, eat, drive home, not to mention spending probably 4 to 5 times what the meal from the jars would cost.
The greatest factor to consider is this: Do you or would you enjoy canning? Some don’t and I understand that. I love it. If I had more jars I would can every day. If I didn’t love it, I would not do it! Another consideration is a place to store the jars. Those that are filled with food do best stored in a cool, dark area. In our basement is an air conditioned /heated garage that the former owners used for a workshop. It stays plenty cool year round and it has no windows so it’s the perfect location. In Texas, the sewing room we built had an 8 x 8 closet and an 8 x 16 closet and I was able to store my canned food in there.
I grew up with my grandparents having a huge garden and my grandma was always canning something. Veggies from the garden, fruit from their many fruit trees, meat from the animals they raised and butchered. Canning is something I’ve always been around.
I’m not looking down on anyone who doesn’t can. I haven’t been able to convince my daughter-in-law to can (though her mom has an All American canner). On a day like today when our entire meal is coming from jars I’ve canned, I’m so happy that I love to can!
Amy says
I have never felt that you were implying that you were better for canning. I enjoy reading what you are canning and hope someday to do the same. Currently I have a flat top glass stove. From my understanding (I could be wrong) you can’t can on them. Maybe someday I will buy a small regular coil stove and put it in the garage just to do the canning. Thank you for the inspiration!
judy.blog@gmail.com says
Don’t do as I do! 🙂 When we moved to Kentucky, I had a glass top. There was an easy way to get gas to the kitchen but Vince didn’t see the value in it and I think he thought that sooner or later, I’d forget about it but I didn’t. For NINE years, I canned all the time on that glass top, hoping to break it. Didn’t! Then we moved to MO and bought a house with a glass top stove. We were in an area with a lot of Amish and I could buy very lost cost fruits and veggies and I canned all the time, again hoping to break that stove. 4-1/2 years and nope, didn’t hurt it at all. I was using a Presto canner and not the very heavy All American.
In Texas, our house was very small and the kitchen was kinda in the middle of the dining area/family room and when Vince sat to watch TV and the heat and jiggling noise bothered him so I bought a Camp Chef two burner stove and did all my evening canning on the porch. It was a bit of a pain because there was almost always a wind blowing and it messed with the flame.
When we bought this house in 2020, that was the first thing I asked the seller (because we didn’t see the house before buying it) . . is there a gas stove? No but there’s a propane line in the house to a gas fireplace on the main level and a gas fireplace in the basement and a drop ceiling so it will be very easy to add a gas line to the kitchen. It was very easy and that’s one of the first things we did here. Then, the heat in the kitchen caused the entire main level to be so hot for hours so we had the plumber come back and extend the gas line downstairs to a garage that’s air conditioned and we bought another gas stove and now I do all my prep work in the kitchen and carry the filled jars down to the basement and do the canning there. There’s no water or drain in the garage . . wish there was but I’m not about to mention that. 🙂 It isn’t really a problem bringing the jars down to can because I store them all in the basement anyway – have to bring them down sooner or later anyway.
Good luck finding yourself a way to do some canning.
Betty says
Lived in Texas for twenty years. (Houston area). Where do you live in Texas that you can have a BASEMENT??? Would have loved to have a basement, but we hit water table at about 14″.
judy.blog@gmail.com says
No basements near Houston! I grew up in Lake Charles, LA and had never even seen a basement in real life til I was 40+ and we moved to Kentucky. I did live in Brownwood (central) Texas – drought stricken bone dry area but we couldn’t have basements because of what they call “shifting sands”. The ground moves way too much to have a basement there. We’re in Missouri now and basements are plentiful in our area.
Marsha B says
I love reading about your gardening and canning. I grew up on a farm in east central Illinois. My mom grew and canned a lot of what we ate. Sometimes I helped her with the tomatoes and green beans. She also made jelly and jams. The black, rich Illinois soil was great to grow a garden. I now live in the Southwest, dry and sandy, and I am 74 years old, so I just buy food at the grocery store. I really miss the flavor of home grown veggies. I now know how lucky I was to have grown up on really good food. Thanks for the memories and keep up the wonderful posts!
judy.blog@gmail.com says
You expressed how I feel. I’m so lucky/blessed to have experienced pretty much everything for every meal having been grown on the farm and cooked from scratch and grew up thinking that was what everyone did. Vince wasn’t raised that way and it’s a constant conflict (not serious!) of him buying things that I wouldn’t buy. He found a recipe this morning that uses garbanzo beans and while he was out, he bought canned garbanzo beans. I have plenty of home canned from dry garbanzo beans but I saved myself a trip to the basement and used one of his storebought cans. 🙂 He will pick up mayonnaise at the store and I say “Don’t you like the mayo I make?” He’s trying to save me some time and doesn’t realize that those are the things I love doing.
Dottie Newkirk says
My grandmother and my mother canned. I started canning a little over 50 years ago and always LOVED doing it except when I was working outside of the home. I would then can after dinner, and stand between my kitchen and dining room, propping myself against the wall to “rest” between loads. When I no longer worked out of the home, I did my canning EARLY in the morning before the heat got too bad. It is always (or for me, anyway) was so nice to pick your fresh produce (vegetables, berries (we had blueberries, raspberries and black raspberries) and all the fruit (apples, pears, cherries and peaches). Always appreciated the canned goods in the winter and hated when we would use up all the homegrown canned goods and have to wait until summer rolled around again.
judy.blog@gmail.com says
Yes! You definitely have to have the time to do it. When you’re growing it yourself, you have to do what you have to do. When we lived in MO the first time and I was canning on a glass top stove that cycled on and off, I would bring a chair in the kitchen, sit there and read while keeping an eye on the pressure gauge. Sometimes there were some very late nites of canning.
vivoaks says
I grew up in NY state with a huge garden and lots of canned and frozen foods. Now I live in the woods, in an area that has soil poisoned with heavy metals, so we can’t plant in the ground. I got some garden bags a couple of years ago (your suggestion – thanks!!) but we have so much shade on our land from all the trees that things don’t grow all that well, and what does is eaten by deer, groundhogs and numerous other varmints. Hopefully I’ll get some potatoes this year, and I did get about a pint of raspberries from one plant, but the tomatoes and peppers have been eaten. I’ll keep trying… 🙂
judy.blog@gmail.com says
Sometimes the battles are many with gardening. I got plenty of tomatoes this year but very few peppers (none of some I planted) and peppers have always grown well here. Even the sweet potatoes haven’t done quite as good as I had hoped. Sometimes I do wonder if it’s worth it but I know I’ll do it again next year. We always seem to dream big though.
Joyce in Iowa says
I, too, loved canning when there were four of us. If my father-in-law grew it, we canned it — plums, apples, corn, tomatoes, potatoes, green beans, carrots, etc. Now that it’s just me, it’s a little harder to get excited about even cooking, let alone canning. 🙂 I’ve always viewed your canning posts as encouraging and showing how it can be done easily along with everything else you do. Are those silicone trays that you use for prep trays? I’ve got some that came with some bakeware but never use them for baking.
judy.blog@gmail.com says
I understand that. I find that Vince and I have way more quick meals than the types of meals I used to cook. I still enjoy the canning. Yes, those are silicone trays. I also use them when putting several things on the freeze dryer trays that I don’t want to get mixed up. If I have just a bit of a couple of types of mint and some sage or basil, I’ll put the separate items in separate trays.
Joyce says
I prefer home-canned tomatoes over store-bought, but after several years of failed gardens (think “only picked 2 or 3 tomatoes total with multiple plants”), and having deer decimate EVERYTHING in the garden, I gave up. It’s not worth it to plant a critter restaurant. The only thing I’ve managed to grow lately is sweet peppers. I plant them in a bed that is full of spearmint, and deer don’t like mint. Maybe I should try a tomato plant next year…