Wordless Wednesday – New Canning Shelf

Canning Homegrown Beans

My winter canning is winding down. But I wanted to get in one more batch of beans. These are the last of my home grown dry beans. The only one you can pick out in the picture is the dark Cherokee Trail of Tears. The rest were Mayflower Pole, Purple Podded Pole, and Old Homestead.

Of the beans I’ve tried so far, Cherokee Trail of Tears, Old Homestead, and Pinto were all pretty equally productive. I’ve decided to go ahead with Cherokee Trail of Tears (black) and a new one, Hidatsa Shield (white with a brown/tan belly) this year.

Canning Apple Pie Filling

Yep, I did yet another canning project. This time it was another fruit that’s inexpensive this time of year…apples. I was really excited by the prospect of being able to can my own pie filling. What took me this long to try it is that you need a special product to do it: ClearJel. I believe I’ve read it’s the only approved thickener you can use when canning.

I used the recipe from the Ball Complete Book for Apple Pie Filling. I found a copy of the recipe here if you don’t have the book. I used about half Gala and half McIntosh just because those were the ones on sale. I didn’t blanch my apples like they suggest though, but rather followed a method of using lemon in my soaking water to keep them from browning.

Baby parsley greeting the winter sun

Just a mini update today on what’s going on in the kitchen herb garden. This is the first parsley sprout. I was just caught by the way the morning sun was hitting it. The chives have also sprouted. So I am just waiting on the rosemary now. It’s light isn’t great on the end of the shelf, so we’ll see what happens there.

Canning Grapefruit

Citrus is in season, so I decided to try my hand at canning fruit for the first time. I had really wanted to use clementines, as they really shine as a winter fruit. But I heard enough bad things about how bitter they become that I decided to go with grapefruit instead.

I peeled the fruit, then peeled each segment. I was told the better job you do getting down to the “meat” of the fruit, the better they will turn out. Citrus can be packed raw into your hot jars and covered with water or syrup. I went with a medium syrup for mine to start and will adjust next time if this is too sweet. Then they are just water bath canned for 10 minutes. My 15 fruit yielded 5 quarts. If you want to try this yourself, there is a more in-depth tutorial over at pickyourown that you can follow here.

Grand Re-Opening

As some of you who stayed subscribed to this blog may have noticed…we are back! I had spent a couple years on my own domain, but after some technical issues I decided to move my posts back to good old, dependable wordpress.com.

There are lots of new posts that were imported in during the move, so lots to catch up on if you weren’t following me on the new domain. I’ve done a pretty good job of learning new skills and ramping up food production here.

For now though, we are covered in a blanket of snow. So I wanted to share a picture I snapped this week of the oregano peeking through.

Winter Canning Projects

Now that I’m looking for things to can, I’m finding there’s a lot more available to can in winter than I’d expected. There are a lot of items like the dry beans and baby carrots I already talked about, that don’t really change price depending on the season. I’ve also found some sale produce like red potatoes and green beans.

I also have heard people commonly say that they freeze produce in fall when the harvest gets ahead of them, and can it at their leisure during the winter. This is an example of one item from my freezer…this is veggie broth made from veggie scraps I’d been throwing in the freezer.

I have two winter fruits I’m planning to can as well.  Hopefully I’ll have a new post up about them soon

Canning Dry Beans

I still had the canning bug, so I woke up early this morning and got started on some dry beans.  Beans are a cheap thing to practice on for new canners (pintos were actually the first thing I canned).  They are also a great time saver because you can get a lot cooked and stored rather than soaking a small batch of dry beans each night before you want to use them and waiting an hour for it took cook each time.

Some of my friends were using a method where all you do is pour 1/2 cup of dry beans into your hot pint jars and top off with boiling water to 1 inch headspace.

They are processed in a pressure canner at 11 pounds for 75 minutes. For quarts you’d use one cup of dry beans and process for 90 minutes.

Starting with dry beans produces beans that are still firm out of the can, so they don’t get over cooked when you use them in a recipe.

I went ahead and did 3 batches: chickpeas, black beans, and pintos. You can see the water level on the pintos and black beans are lower. That’s because I stared with a recommendation of 2/3 cup of dry beans per jar. For the last batch of chickpeas I reduced the amount to a rounded 1/2 cup and you can see much less liquid was absorbed for a nicer level.

UPDATED: I’ve had several questions about the cost of home canning dry beans. Here’s my calculation:

At Aldi’s, I got 2 pound bags of pintos for $1.49. That’s 75 cents a pound. Each pound is about 2 cups, so I could make 4 pints with it. That means these cost me 19 cents per pint.

In my case, that is the only expense because I am using reusable lids. You could add about 10 cents each if you are using standard lids. Pints are a bit larger than store bought cans.

Canning Baby Carrots

I found a good idea for a winter canning project and got a batch done today. They are just cheap baby carrots from Aldis. No preparation needed. Just drop them raw in the hot jar, cover with boiling water leaving 1 inch headspace, and add 1/2 tsp (1 tsp for quarts) canning salt if desired. These pints were pressure canned for 25 minutes at 11 pounds of pressure. Quarts would go in for 30 minutes.

And I’ll end with a little view of my kitchen, all prepped and ready to can.

Kitchen herb garden

I put a shelf on my kitchen window this week. The 36″ shelf I found fit right between the side jams with just a cm or two shaved off the ends. I put 5 screws down through the top into the sill.

Underneath I added a couple of support brackets, knowing that the cats will insist on sitting on the edge of the shelf. I needed to whittle the trim a bit too to get them to fit.

And the finishing touch was splurging on some lovely little pots from Steins.  I put them together using the two pot method I posted earlier for decorative containers.

Since my kitchen is done in yellow tile, the bright cheery colors fit in perfectly.