Preparedness for when

[Deleted User]

If you like meat in jars as part of your general store, in the World Foods aisle in T*sco in the Polish section they sell a spicy sausagemeat called Kielbasa which is absolutely delicious and comes in a glass jar, I make pasta sauces with it and sausage pie type things. It's spicy and garlicy and in the jar has a lovely layer of fat on top which you can use for frying or to make the pastry, a really good product and quite often on offer at £1.50ish (normal price is £2.50ish) which is when I buy it, might be worth a try, Cheers Lyn xxx.

wondercollie

Kielbasa is a staple in Alberta (settled by a lot of Eastern Europeans). Usually it's vacum packed, don't ever remember seeing it in jars.

It does up really nice with saurkraut, pierogies and sour cream. I've learnt to adapt my cooking what with the husband and living here.

[Deleted User]

WONDERCOLLIE how is the new job going? Hope you have a better time there than you were havingin your last one. I'd never heard of Keilbasa until I found a canadian cook book at a jumble sale, and then found it in the supermarket and decided to try it, I am hooked!!!!! One thing we can get here is Kabanosi Sausages, and I am lucky to have a farm shop locally that has sausages of all types made for them with locally sourced ingredients and we get Kabanosi not cooked but fresh and ready to go, they are delicious and so versatile, I'm hooked on them too!!!!!!! I can think of WURST things to be hooked on, Cheers Lyn xxx.

westlothianlass

HI all
D&DD welcome back, its so lovely to hear from you again.
WCS hope you have a lovely spring and summer ,take care of yourself x

Weather here is decidedly strange, very little snow but bitterly cold, so happy to share some of the white stuff if any of you would like to send it up here:D.
Hoping to get in the garden this weekend, may look like the michelin man with all the layers I will need though:o, but hey Im sure the brisk air will do me some good!

Never heard of the sausages MrsL and WonderCollie but will look for them next time im at the shops, as they sound interesting.

Thoroughly enjoying all the posts guys and gals,
WLL x

Hillbilly1

Sausage talk - I like it! Anything to stem our purchasing of the middle class staple, chorizo!

JayneC

Well if this comes to pass, this could very well be TEOTWAWKI. We are going to randomly poison our food!!!! The world has well and truly gone completely bonkers. A version of Survivors may well become a reality.
http://www.naturalnews.com/039657_GMO_food_DNA_expression_rewiring.html

D&DD

Evening all
So pleased you found the offer useful Ginny I think I'm going to add the other two to my order as I don't think I'd ever see them again at that price though god only knows where I'm going to put them :rotfl:

Ali I have some trees in the ground and some are in pots,my garden is weird,its a sort of wraparound the house shape like an L shape but pointy! Its also down a hole so although its a south facing garden we get no sun as theres a house at the top of the 'hill' 15 feet away..soo its a bit challenging but the trees still fruit well even in these conditions.

The garden has been terraced now so currently we have 3 apples in the ground on the top terrace to be trained as cordons (lord derby,gala and spartan)Round the side in a bed wedged in next to my compost bin I have a family tree which has two varieties on it but I have no idea what they are one is yellow and one is red

I also have in pots damson merryweather,tommys blue plum and a greengage,a victoria plum erm...ooh a nectarine,lemon and orange in the greenhouse,an olive on the windowsill currently and waiting on a free gala tree from a mag offer..you'd think I did live in a field!

Potwise we have the plums etc in pots approx 18" wide by around a foot deep..not the optimum size really but they all seem quite happy so far in them.

mardatha

Heavy snow again here

maryb

Hi, my pressure canner is an All American which has a weight but also has a gauge to enable you to see the pressure. I chose that one because it doesn't have a gasket, which I thought might be difficult to source, and also the ones which rely solely on gauges have to be recalibrated periodically and I didn't know how you would go about that in the UK.

I think the official advice in the US is that you can't use a pressure cooker because the size is smaller and the time to come up to pressure and the time to depressure is all part of the processing time. Having said that, the books don't differentiate between different sizes of pressure canner when it comes to processing times. It's important that it processes food at at least 12psi to kill botulism spores and most European pressure cookers only have two operatin g pressures, 8 and 12 psi. The issue with those is that you can't be sure it is operating at a minimum of 12psi. However the old Prestige presssure cookers with three weights offer 5, 10 and 15 psi. One of the major US books on pressure canning "Putting Food By" does talk about using a pressure cooker for canning and offers some guidelines for compensating for the smaller size. It suggests processing at 15 psi.

Does anyone remember ChocClare who used to post on the toughies thread about a year ago? She posted a link to the Le Parfait site which had instructions for canning meat in ordinary pressure cookers - it looks like the French have been doing this perfectly happily for years ( and their pressure cookers don't reach 15 psi)

That suggests you could use a Prestige pressure cooker - but I "bottled" out (sorry!)

grandma247

Some garages can check your gauge. I have the info somewhere. They have something that they use to check pressure on something for vehicles. Sorry been a while since I read it so don't know the tech stuff. Will have to check it out. It was someone on the canning group who's husband was a mechanic that mentioned it ages ago.

Seemingly a garage that repairs radiators,cooling systems or braking systems will have the right eqipment for testing low pressure items like the gauge