PRESERVING AND SAVING THE FRUIT (&VEGETABLES) OF YOUR LABORS
There is nothing at all more fulfilling than opening up a jar of your own green beans, or beets, or peaches, or whatever, in the dead of winter. Always makes me feel superior to the rest of the world. So how difficult is it? Not really.
Canning saves refrigerator and freezer space. More importantly, you are stickin' it to the man because your food is your OWN and you are not wasting energy to preserve it. The whole idea of keeping it green is to be more self-sufficient, right?
You WILL need a pressure canner, a big one, especially if you're going to can anything in quarts (like tomatoes, or tomato sauce, or pumpkin, or chicken stock). These things are not as complicated as they seem...they just use pressure to jack the temperature up PAST 212 degrees...remember high school physics? Neither do I, but it works. This effectively kills any bacteria that got into the jar with your vegetables. With fruits it's not as important because they contain a lot more acid, which keeps the bacteria at bay.
My Bible of canning is Putting Food By, by Janet Greene, Ruth Hertzberg, and Beatrice Vaughan. It lists everything alphabetically and gives clear and precise instructions as to how to prepare the food for canning, or freezing, and how long to process the jars. There are even cool recipes like apple pie filling, where you prepare the apple pie beforehand, can it, and when you're ready for a pie just dump in in the pie shell and cook! These ladies are very sensible, and constantly worried about spoilage, therefore they have written down EVERYTHING you can do to avoid it.
By way of example, here's how I do tomatoes...First I blend 'em all up, then put that through a food mill to take out the skin and seeds (most of it, anyway). Then I heat it up until the water and tomato sauce separate, skim the tomato sauce off the top, put it into clean, hot quart jars, and put them into an already Boiling Water Bath. (Because tomatoes are so acidy, you don't need to pressure can...but you can...heh heh...if you want to). They stay in there around half an hour, then I just pull out the jars with my handy jar lifter and wait to hear the sweet sound of the lids popping into place, indicating an airless seal.
String beans, on the other hand, are much simpler...Just pick em, wash 'em, stick 'em standing straight up in a pint or quart jar, leaving 1/2 inch headroom. Then cover with boiling water, leaving 1/2 inch headroom also. These do need to be pressure canned, 10 pounds of pressure, pints for 20 minutes, quarts for 25 minutes.
Be sure to email me (Cdonnelly@102themountain.com) next February when you're enjoying your garden bounty!!
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a big one, especially if you're going to can anything in quarts (like tomatoes, or tomato sauce, or pumpkin, or chicken stock). These things are not as complicated as they seem...they just use pressure to jack the temperature up PAST 212 degrees...remember high school physics? Neither do I, but it works. This effectively kills any bacteria that got into the jar with your vegetables. With fruits it's not as important because they contain a lot more acid, which keeps the bacteria at bay.
by Janet Greene, Ruth Hertzberg, and Beatrice Vaughan. It lists everything alphabetically and gives clear and precise instructions as to how to prepare the food for canning, or freezing, and how long to process the jars. There are even cool recipes like apple pie filling, where you prepare the apple pie beforehand, can it, and when you're ready for a pie just dump in in the pie shell and cook! These ladies are very sensible, and constantly worried about spoilage, therefore they have written down EVERYTHING you can do to avoid it.
(Because tomatoes are so acidy, you don't need to pressure can...but you can...heh heh...if you want to). They stay in there around half an hour, then I just pull out the jars with my handy jar lifter and wait to hear the sweet sound of the lids popping into place, indicating an airless seal. 
