Canning ALL Day

First, thank you all so very much for noticing the “V” missing on For the Love of Nature. Please don’t ever feel bad about pointing out a mistake. Every now and then, someone will point out a mistake that was actually in the chart and I’m happy to explain why I stitched it that way. Sometimes I fix it and stitch it correctly, sometimes I just follow the chart. I would a million times over rather explain why something is not a mistake than frame something and then realize there was a mistake.

Now to the canning . . Here’s the “why” for this post.

You all remember that Vince was in Texas during the “Great Freeze and Power Outage of 2021”. As much as he complains about my prepping (and he does complain because I am a bit over the top!). There’s a fireplace in the house we had there; we had plenty of firewood. We had a gas stove. We had generators – not a whole house but we had propane, gas and solar generators. We had a 500 gallon and two – 250 gallon propane tanks and they were full. He wasn’t comfortable but he survived and wasn’t miserable.

Now to the current time . . Beginning tomorrow, our temps will be below freezing – just down into the low 20’s to mid-teens but starting January 5, our night temps will be somewhere between 10 and zero and our day temps will mostly not get above the high 20’s during the day . . for seven days. Too many folks around here have all electric homes and have no idea what they will do if the power goes out. If it gets as cold as it says it will and stays cold for that many days, it really may cause stress to some power grids. Be ready!

Think about the following – what would you do if:

• There’s no way to heat your home;
• There’s no way to heat your food:
• There’s no internet (how will you entertain yourself and your children?)
• Even if you have community water and certainly if you have a well, what will you do with no water?
• If there’s anyone you really need to communicate with, do you have a backup plan for communication?

I’ve mentioned all this before but in southwest Louisiana, where it rarely freezes, we had an ice storm. I lived in an all electric house and I lost power for seven days! I can tell you that I learned a lot during those seven days. It was a very hard and miserable lesson and I hope no one has to go through seven days without power unless you are really prepared for a situation such as this.

As you might guess, there’s lots of home canned food here. We consume a lot of it and I don’t have a great storage plan so I cannot look at a shelf and say “I have 10 pints of pasta sauce, 4 quarts of canned chicken, 6 pints of canned roast beef. My jars are stored in the boxes the jars came in and those boxes are stacked on top of each other. I try to keep a variety in each box. A box of pints may have two jars each of pinto beans, cannellini beans, hominy, eggplant salsa, canned chicken (because the eggplant salsa is served over canned chicken) and canned ground beef. That way, it’s kind of a surprise what’s in each box but I know that every box of a dozen jars will have enough meat and veggies to provide two to three meals, depending on what’s in each box. I also keep fully cases (12 pints) of just veggies, and a case of just meat.

Quart jars generally have two jars each of cranberry juice, broth (ham, chicken, beef), potatoes and ground beef. I like to drain the potatoes, heat up the ground beef with garlic and onions, stir in the potatoes and seasoning and we have a meal.

The 1-1/2 pint jars mostly contain soup – tomato soup, split pea soup, chili, etc.

When I first heard about the low temps coming I wasn’t concerned – just going to be a cold week. But then Vince mentioned that he hoped this wasn’t going to be like what happened in Texas and then I started hearing more about that so I thought . . i’d better make sure I have some of our favorite canned foods that are ready to heat and eat.

At the current time, and probably for quite a while in the past and into the future, The All New Ball Book of Canning and Preserving has been my favorite canning book. In this book, there’s a chart (of sorts) of meals to be canned that require no up front cooking. There is a lot of prep work – washing, peeling, chopping, etc. but most (maybe all) of the recipes produce 4 pints or 2 quarts. This is the easiest canning and produces a nice variety of food. I most always can meal type in pints because these are the types of dishes that are served over rice (barley for us) or noodles/pasta. With noodles, pasta or rice/barley, one pint of meat/veggies is plenty and if I’m cooking for more than just the two of us, I’ll open two pints.

I had everything I needed to make Chicken Chili Verde, Chicken and Gravy Dinner, Beef Stroganoff and Pot Roast in a Jar so those are what I made.

The beef was from one 5 pound roast out of the freezer and the chicken was about 4-3/4 pounds from one package of boneless, skinless chicken breasts that had been in the freezer.

What you see above is for three of the recipes. The Beef Stroganoff only needed mushrooms and onions so I took the lazy route and cut them into the jars and didn’t mess up another prep dish.

I ended up with 4 pints of the Chicken and Gravy Dinner and 5 pints of each of the others so that’s 19 pints ready to go into boxes for when we want a quick heat and eat meal. I started prepping about 2 p.m., put them in the canner about 4:45 p.m. About 7, the canner was done. I turned it off and at 7:45, I removed the jars. The real work was between 2 and 4:45 so in less than three hours of working, we get 19 meals. Cannot beat that . . at least that’s how I feel about it.

Honestly, I’m not even concerned about the coming weather. We’re ready for whatever comes our way. We have enough to share if neighbors need anything. If the power should go out, I couldn’t use my magnifying lamp but I have plenty of knitting I could do so . . no concerns here at all but I am super happy to have these four recipes back on the shelves. I do rotate and won’t use all of these first but, if it’s like other times, I’ll still manage to need more of these before I need more of anything else.