Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Molly-ness
My neighbor called me last week and asked me if I wanted a box of pears. Sure! So, to take care of my free pears, I ended up buying two dozen pint jars and a $70 pressure canner (the cheapie hot water bath canners all said "do not use on glass cooktops"--can you tell I'm getting gladder and gladder I opted to put off the gas range upgrade?!?!). Then, last night I had my first solo canning experience: two dozen pints of Bartlett pears. And guess what? They all sealed! Now we have to clean the basement so we have a place to put them. You'll have to wait until we can't get good fresh pears any more to hear how they turned out.
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4 comments:
I was just saying last night, as I was eating a bowl of fresh sliced peaches, how great it would be to bottle peaches and enjoy them in the winter when we're reduced to cauliflower and oranges. Bleh.
Peaches I have, but not enough to can. Instead, I'll be putting up some frozen sliced peaches--my family traditionally eats them, partially thawed but still slushy, as part of breakfast on Christmas and Easter. Yum. The meal also traditionally includes cheesy scrambled eggs, and bran muffins for Christmas and hot cross buns for Easter.
FYI-- last summer I did quite a bit of water-bath canning on my flat-top stove. The instructions for my particular flat-top stove said that as long as the diameter of the canning kettle wasn't more than 2 inches wider than the diameter of the burner and as long as I switched burners between batches it would be fine. And it was, though the water was much slower to boil than it was on the gas range I used the year before.
I used to think canning was a fusty old grandma thing to do but it's really quite a lot of fun. It's so satisfying to hear that nice little popping noise the jars make when they seal.
Since you have a pressure canner now, you should do tuna! Tuna is still running down here on the south coast-- can you get it in Portland?
Sarah, the issue with the cheapie canners I was finding at Freddy's wasn't the diameter of the pot, but the flatness or lack thereof of the bottom--not enough rubber meeting the road (also the problem with a lot of cast-iron cookware, which frequently has a ridge around the outside edge of the bottom of the pot).
I was chatting with someone in my ward yesterday who likes to can meat and chicken. I'm not totally sold on the idea, I'm afraid. I think if I did it, it would never end up getting used. And I haven't been a huge tuna consumer since it was the one thing I threw up when pregnant with Number One. If you want to schlep some tuna up to Portland and use my pressure canner, though, by all means come on over!
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