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Waaaaaaay back in the day, salt and sugar were used to extend the shelf life of many foods. That's all changed with the opportunities home-canning presents to us. We no longer have to worry about how much salt to use to cure meat in order to preserve it. (Even though it sure is yummy; bacon....) We don't have to use as much sugar in syrups to preserve fruit inside a jar. We can make jams and jellies with less sugar added pectin so more of the fruit flavor comes through instead of just tasting sweet. Some folks still have in their head that home-canned food must contain extra salt and sugar in order to preserve the food. On the contrary, you can preserve most of your food without it. It is there solely for flavoring now. What a boon to folks with dietary issues that require less of either or both! This also allows us to cut down on how much we consume anyway. Commercially processed foods don't allow us to take any salt or sugar out of the product prior to consuming it. I'm notorious for forgetting to add salt or not adding enough when I'm canning. I don't use a whole lot of salt when I cook. When I use my home canned ingredients, I feel like I need to add more to taste because the salt is already missing from the initial product. I'm personally a fan of old-fashioned jam with the full hit of the sugar rush to keep you going. Most all my jams are made with regular pectin. Low and no sugar added pectin is available and you can experiment away with flavor combinations. In applesauce and fruit butters, I don't use as much sugar anymore. I want to taste the fruit. I use lighter syrups when canning fruit such as berries and pineapple. I don't like the blah flavor of those types of items without any sugar added. Making a light syrup is enough to support the fruit flavor without the candy-type mouth feel. Because of this freedom; feel free to experiment with how much salt is included in a recipe. Sugar can be a fussy item in recipes containing pectin, so you have to watch that. Try some jams with low or no sugar added pectin. Experiment with a lighter syrup on fruit or by using honey in apple butter. Home canned food can be amazingly healthy and doesn't need to carry the old-fashioned connotation of being bad for you.

The food I make is real. It isn't perfect. Very often, the product inside the jars doesn't even look appetizing. However, if you leave my house still hungry, it is your own fault. I try to feed everyone that shows up. You can create the prettiest soup or the most yummy smelling broth; then you process it. All of a sudden it looks like crap or vomit inside that jar. (Go back to the Don't Look post.) Everything settles out inside the jar while it is processing. If there are any particles smaller than any other, they will end up settled out. The meat and veggies tend to sink to the bottom and any sauce will stay on top. The beef broth from this week's ordeal: I strained it through a fine sieve. I'm not picky enough to filter through a coffee filter. All that sediment in the bottom is flavor that will go into the soup, stew, or gravy that I make with it. I know, it doesn't look like store bought broth. That's the whole point. This is homemade food, more flavor, and you know what's in it!

The Extraordinary Venison Profusion of 2022 is in full swing. 67 quarts of food on the shelves.... 67 quarts of food..... Last Tuesday, I was given an additional 8 pounds of ground venison. I mix deer half and half with beef. I prefer the flavor when it's mixed. What started as 16 lbs of meat, 8 deer 8 beef, has turned into a metric-shit-ton of food. I also used up a whole pile (2 trash bags full) of cans and a dozen jars (already washed and refilled) of various home-canned tomato products to make all this food. What are we gonna do with all this? Quite a bit will be shared with friends and family. Christmas is coming. Food isn't getting any cheaper. The rest we will use up throughout the year. I ended up making 4 core products. I'm sure there are more that I could have experimented with if I had other ingredients. This is what I came up with that used what I had on hand. Mom's Chili, Spaghetti Meat Sauce, Hamburger Veggie Soup, and Cooked Meat Mix. It took 4 days to complete all the processing (14 quarts at a time). I JUST pulled the last jars out of the canners. I've written up recipe cards for all. Don't forget the Worchestershire Sauce in the veggie soup like I did!

BEANS! Just this week I cracked open the chili beans I made last year. I used this great video from Sutton's Daze on YouTube for the instruction. She uses pinto beans in the video and that's what I went with as well. I'm going to run a couple batches of these and get them done. I use quarts and have written up a recipe card for you. This is also a recipe that's easy to make a couple jars at a time if you have an extra space in your pressure canner while processing for meat times. After using some of these beans during the Extraordinary Venison Profusion of 2022, my only change to the recipe is to decrease the chili powder a little bit. I did use heaping teaspoons of chili powder when I made them and it was just a little too much for our taste.

Very often, there's space for an extra jar of something in the canner. It's handy because it's a good way to get the occasional jar of something stocked up without having to run batches of it. Having the extra jar(s) inside the canner also means that the other jars of product will stay put and not move around or fall over during the processing time. My favorite item to can one jar at a time is, water. It doesn't matter how long the processing time is, a jar of water will go along for the ride with the rest of the canner load just fine. Many times folks are instructed to just fill a jar with water to hold the space inside the canner. I say, why not add a lid to that jar and then have water on hand for emergencies. It is literally safe for years inside that jar and can be opened and drank without any fuss. The canned water is also sterile and can be used for wound cleaning in an emergency. How to? I add filtered water to the jar, lid up and add to the canner. Then process for the length of time needed for whatever product is in the other jars. Let cool and label with the date canned. I have a whole section of shelf just for water. Water is also a great thing to can when you're just starting out and learning. You can foul up and not be out anything. If I'm running a pressure canner load and have a longer processing time, I will fix up a jar of chili beans and can those. See the post on Musical Fruit.

I can still remember Dad yelling.... PUT IT RIGHT BACK WHERE YOU FOUND IT! Well..... I got so good at it, he couldn't even tell I used the tool; unless he saw me using it. Has this passed over into my own everyday life? Nope. I want it to. I do have a few things that if you move them, I will have a fit (maybe this can help other folks like me): There's a pair of scissors** that LIVE in the knife block. Use them, wash them, put the damn things right back. When I take the weights off the pressure canners**, the weights go right into the silverware drawer in their cubbie. There are 2 magnetic timers that live on the range hood, one for above each canner. The magnetic lid wand** gets stuck to a particular knife in the knife block, no where else. The church key** I use to open jars is stuck to a magnet on the fridge and better not move. Lids ready to use go in the little white basket that lives on the microwave. Trash bags live on the shelf next to the trash cans. You may take a bag, not the roll. There is a sharpie marker in the zipper bag drawer, use it and put it right back! Yes, there's a separate drawer for bags and one for foils, wraps, and papers. Plastic and wood utensils in one crock, metal in the other except for the blue enamel ladle cause I will need it. Here's a few that I'm working on: Canners live on the top shelf in the pantry. The food chopper** and mandolin** have their own garage (container) in the pantry and get returned when clean. The manual food mills** and the mixer attachment food mill**, also have their own garage and are returned after cleaning. There are several needing to be implemented: Tea and milk have their own shelf in the door of the fridge. Kitchenaids** and their attachments..... need I say more? All other small appliances, food processor**, ice cream maker**, etc need a home Empty plastic food containers and their lids. They have their own cabinet already, it shouldn't be this hard. Herb and Spice organization, the racks** are purchased but still in the boxes. The jar lifter** tends to travel away and get left, not even in the kitchen. Hot pads.... grrrrr I guess after the holidays it's time for organization according to the sales that companies have.... I fight with it everyday. I know I'm not alone. Would you share your tales, pet peeves and hacks? ** I'm an Amazon Associate. This means if you click on the link and possibly buy something linked on this website, I might get a little commission that helps support the cost of this blog.

Believe it or not; my not-so-happy ass has been to town TWICE this week! And to the big grocery store TWICE! Gasp. THE computer died. Like total panic mode, I can't work because the computer died. Got Computer a doctor appointment and they were able to fix it right away; thank goodness. So a trip to town for drop off and a trip to bring it home. Not what I had planned for this week but I did get to hit up the thrift store. In other news, due to a mix up at the processor, Handsome has acquired yet another deer. I was also gifted 8 more pounds of ground venison! I went ahead and made up the cooked meat mix and have been canning with it for the past 4 days; chili, veggie soup, spaghetti meat sauce. I know what everyone is getting for Christmas! Due to a screw up at my old job, I've been called in to clean up a mess and will be working on that for a few weeks. My posts might be hit or miss during that time. I have plans to make a few things for gifts. The postal service says the last day to send a package thru priority mail is the 19th. Stay tuned for those updates as well.

Did you know that 10 pounds of pressure is equal to 6.8 meters of depth in the ocean? The pressure used to can for my elevation is 10 lbs. So.... let's drown a bird. That sounds a bit morbid..... I have 2 Presto 16 quart pressure canners** and have been using them for a few years now. I'm very comfortable pressure canning and usually get excellent results. I've never used the canners for anything else until now. All over YouTube and bookface I kept seeing folks pressure cooking their entire frozen turkeys, using their pressure canners. Gotta try that! Since I didn't need to roast one, I thought this would be a good way to experiment with my 99 cents a pound bird that wouldn't thaw. The frozen giblet bag is still inside the bird, you can see the plastic truss thingy is also still attached. That bird was frozen solid. I was able to get the wrapper off and that was it. I chunked up celery, onions, carrots, pepper and parsley and threw those in. I added water up to the maximum fill line inside the canner. I put the lid on and started the canner off at medium heat to warm things through. Once the canner was hot enough to burn to the touch, I upped the heat to medium high. Then I waited for the steam to roll. It took some time. Once the nipple popped up telling me the canner was full of hot steam, I added the weight and rolled on up to 10 lbs pressure. I backed the heat off a little bit until the weight was rocking correctly and then turned the heat down to medium low. The canner sounded different than the usual water boiling around hot jars inside of it. Google said to p.c. 10 min per 1.5 pounds of bird. This one weighed 15.8 lbs. So I went with 90 minutes. It was fully cooked, it could have used 5 or 10 minutes more just to make it totally fall apart. I was very pleased. The breast meat in particular was so juicy and flavorful. I lifted the meat out of the canner with two long spoons and set it into a dishpan to cool for awhile. (I am an Amazon Affiliate. You can click this link to purchase the item I'm talking about. I might earn a small commission from that, which helps support this website.) Once deboned, this bird yielded 4 quarts of well packed meat in broth. The carcass also made FIVE GALLONS of broth and I honestly think it could have made more but I was tired. More on that later. This was such a simple process and so easy to do. If you have a bird that won't thaw, don't hesitate to try this! I will definitely be doing this again. **** I'm an Amazon Associate. This means if you click on the link and possibly buy something linked on this website, I might get a little commission that helps support the cost of this blog.

Mom was a good cook. She helped me with the basics and let me run with it at a very young age. I never got the impression she truly enjoyed cooking, it was definitely more of an obligation for her. I still use a few of her recipes often (she wrote nothing down), the Goulash and Chili recipes are hers. I took over most of the cooking at home when I was about 7. Holiday meals were definitely part of the obligation for Mom. Thanksgiving was turkey and Christmas was ham. Both were cooked the same way. Both exited the roaster oven with similar results. Bird was thawed in the kitchen sink. About midnight on T-day morning, bird was extracted from it's wrappings, set in the roaster pan and set to cook. Until lunchtime. Didn't matter how big the turkey was. Didn't matter if the popup timer popped. That oven would not be shut off until it was time to pull apart what was left of it and put it on a platter. You can imagine what the texture and flavor of a 12 hour baked turkey was...... Remember that scene in "Christmas Vacation"? Yeah, almost that.... I don't remember what year I finally convinced her I could handle cooking the "damn dead bird" as she called it. I knew I had to find a different way, so I used all the resources I had to prepare for a better outcome. I was pretty young to be calling the Butterball turkey line (as seen on TV) and I think the lady on the other end probably thought it was a prank. But she answered my questions and I took notes. I read the tag and the instructions on the packaging. I also called my Aunt for advice, she was a master cook. (This was before Google.) Bird was still thawing in the sink. At midnight, Mom banged on the newel post at the bottom of the stairs (my alarm system). "WHEN ARE YOU COMING DOWN TO START THIS DAMN DEAD BIRD?" I'm not, Mom. I went back to bed and got up at my usual 6ish. She was right ontop of me; "WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO START THIS DAMN DEAD BIRD?" It's not ready yet Mom. She stood right there in the kitchen, in her nightgown, a frown on her face, a glare in her eyes. When Mom laughed, her face would light up and was so pretty; when she got stern like this, it was like a tornado was about to be unleashed. "WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO THE DAMN DEAD BIRD?" "YOU HAVE TO GET GOING ON THIS OR WE'RE NEVER GOING TO EAT TODAY." I kept my cool. I greased the roaster pan, unwrapped the bird and took out the giblets. I rinsed off the bird and it's parts. I then rubbed olive oil all over and inside the bird and placed it in the roaster pan. I placed the giblets next to it and added some chunks of carrot, celery, onion. "I DON'T KNOW WHY YOU'RE DOING ALL THIS, I DON'T DO ALL THIS!" Dad was in his spot in the rocking chair next to the countertop. I then sprinkled some parsley and pepper all over the bird and veggies. I slid the pan into the oven and added water in the bottom. I set the lid on and set the temp on the oven. It was maybe 7am at this point. There were still some ice crystals from inside the bird and she saw them inside the wrapper. "IT'S NOT THAWED, WE ARE NEVER GOING TO EAT TODAY." Cue 11am, D.D.B. is smelling pretty good. Getting a little golden ontop. Popup timer hasn't popped yet. I'm nervous. People are starting to show up with more food. My job was the bird, I'm trusting my research and the notes I took. My Aunt comes in and declared the bird done, popup timer has popped. She takes it out of the oven and starts to carve the bird for dinner. She made gravy from the drippings. Everyone else raved over the D.D.B. Mom ate a little bit of it but was just too afraid that it wasn't cooked long enough to "kill the salmonella". After that year, it was my job to roast the bird for T-day. Mom started eating the turkey and the year Dad passed away; she complimented me on it and we had a good laugh. To this day, if I'm going to roast any kind of poultry, I prepare and roast it this way. It worked and there's been no real reason to change it. And I still call it the "damn dead bird". Fast forward a few years and here I am with a few pressure cookers/canners and some turkeys needing jarred....

What do you do to reward yourself for a job well done? Alot of folks would answer with a meal out, a lottery ticket or buying something they've wanted. Not this girl. I wanted an entire day to spend canning; a marathon canning day. I planned for the Friday after Thanksgiving; Handsome was gonna work and I was needing a day in the kitchen. After all, I have all this new venison and turkey to work on and I've been wanting to make room in the freezer...... In preparation for this "reward" I had washed several dozen jars, cleaned the fridge top to bottom AND attempted to thaw a whole pile of deer, beef and turkey. The turkey would not thaw. It had been in the fridge since I purchased it, not even a whisper of thawing. I could barely get the wrapper off the thing. The beef and deer thawed nicely. 6am Friday morning, I decided to clean out the refrigerator freezer because the food was falling out onto my feet. This yielded a few packages of hamburger patties, some grilled chicken, and a whole bunch of ground venison. All frozen solid, of course. How am I going to get all this product ready to can? I sat the turkey in the sink and ran warm water over it to get the wrapper off. I sat the whole thing inside the pressure canner, frozen solid and added water to the maximum fill line. I tried it. I pressure cooked the bird and it turned out great! Deboned the bird, set the bones off to the side for broth. Product ready to can. All this ground venison though.... Started the first couple packages on thaw in the microwave, worked well enough I could atleast get the wrappers off and into the skillet to brown it. Then... The microwave died. Like died died. Dead. Well now what do I do? Bring out the old trusty cold water in the sink trick. I placed all the still frozen packages into said sink and was able to get the wrappers off. It would take forever to try to brown all this frozen meat. Think.... what do I have instead of a microwave? An Instant Pot! I went ahead and pressure cooked the "Cooked Meat Mix" in the Instant Pot with a quart of water instead of browning the meat like normal. Drained it but saved back the broth and fat. Product ready to can. Now what am I going to do with this sliced grilled chicken? I literally just packed it into jars and poured Bestie's chicken broth over it. Product ready to can. Oh no, the hamburger patties. I've been wanting to try that.... Pan fried them to almost done, trimmed to fit the jars, sliced onion to go between them and BOOM, product ready to can. The nice thing about canning meats is that it's always 90 minutes for quarts, 75 minutes for pints at 10 lbs of pressure for my elevation. It doesn't matter what's inside the jar. If it's a meat, that's the time. You can mix and match to fill the canner. It also doesn't matter whether the meat is previously cooked or not. The processing time is the same. Since the fridge was totally cleaned out, I staged full jars in it. I started both canners and processed a few batches of the various meats. At the same time I was making more of the "Cooked Meat Mix" in one Instant Pot and making broth in the other. I kept both dishwashers running along with the clothes washer; trying to clean as I go. I was a whirlwind and I was having a blast! (The electric company enjoyed that day too.) I kept going til about 6pm and when that canner load was done, I shut it off and called it quits. By the time I made it to bed that night, I could barely walk. It was more of a shuffle. The hip, lower back, ankles, neck; all were screaming. I knew the pain was coming. I know I did it to myself. I had soooo much fun though! There's still a fridge full of food needing put up.... Saturday morning dawns, I'm up at my usual 6am. Still hurting but I've got a fridge full of food to get finished. Got a round of product into both canners and started both Instant Pots back up. By the time those were finished about noon, I was done. I got cleaned up and we went for ice cream and visiting. Now it's Sunday morning and here I am.... procrastinating and trying to talk my back into allowing me to keep going. Handsome drug out the spare microwave for me. The fridge is still full of food!

DO NOT look at your food. I mean it! Don't do it! Okay okay... I'm trying to say; don't obsess about what the food inside the jar looks like after you're done processing it and it's cooled. Newbies tend to pick apart everything about the product they've canned and very often it leads them choosing not to eat their food that they spent so much time and money on. (I've been there.) You've researched what you want to can and how to process it. You've mastered using the equipment you've purchased. You have purchased or grown the best ingredients you're able. You have packed and processed the food according to USDA recommendations. The jars have sealed and you're ready to wash the jars and store them for when you want to eat it. But.... There's a weird black spot inside the jar... is that mold? A fly that got in? A speck of pepper? Or just a piece of food that overcooked next to the glass. Remember that the inside of that canner gets to 240 degrees; that's going to burn food when it's hanging out by it's lonesome on the side of the glass. There's a white film all over the chicken.... that must be mold. I drained all the fat off. Well, no ya didn't. It's impossible to get all the fat off the food prior to canning. There's fat still inside the meat and that fat will migrate outwards as the food and jar cool. When we buy cans of food at the store, we cannot see inside. For some reason, as a society, we tend to trust the faceless people that canned the food in the factories over the cleanliness and effort that we did ourselves. Stop it. Your kitchen and processing is far cleaner than the food factories are able to be. Go read some articles about the B, and find that most infections happen from commercially canned food. Home canned food has lightyears more nutrition and doesn't include alot of the franken-ingredients used as preservatives in the commercial food supply. Trust what you've learned and the skills you have to accomplish this for your family.

Blessings to you and yours on this special holiday. Handsome and I hope your day was both peaceful and tasty. Our dinner in town was very good and we left full but not overstuffed. While he's taken off to visit family, I stayed behind and finished cleaning the fridge. This is a job I hate and I always put it off too long. I would much rather clean the toilet than the fridge. BUT I'm needing room to stage filled jars in preparation for canning tomorrow and the weekend. I usually soak the parts and pieces from the fridge in the bathtub. Then I would blast the crap off with the showerhead. My dishwasher does not have a center riser in the bottom rack. This has allowed me to wash very large items in it and it's soooooo helpful. I thought this time I would try it with the shelves and drawers from the fridge. Oh man, game changer. The shelves rinsed completely clean and the drawer seams are all dust free! My worries about melting the plastic were unwarranted. If your dishwasher doesn't have the bottom center riser, give this a try; it might make the work alot easier. I feel like Marge Simpson when she put the toilet seats in the dishwasher!