The Prepping Thread - A Newer Beginning ;)

elaine241

houseinafield said:

 I've had the canner for well over a year and finally plucked up the courage to use it last Monday. It was ridiculously easy so I did a second batch yesterday. There's so many excellent videos on YouTube. I would recommend Suttons Daze for no nonsense, easy to follow instructions. I now have 30 jars of chicken breast in my 'store' and next will be a batch of stewing steak. The worst that could happen is that the jars don't seal in which case, now perfectly cooked, it can all go back in the freezer. Happily both batches were fine. My sister who bought her canner at the same time as I did and is an old hand at it now, gave me the push I needed by telling me to rinse out 16 jars, put them on the side and get my canner out of it's box! The process took me two days in all because I can't stand for long. Day 1, I got everything ready including chopping the chicken into chunks. Day 2 I canned it!! Give it a go....rinse your jars, bring your canner out of it's hiding place, get your ingredients ready!

I have a huge stash of used jars in my shed. Do you use new Mason jars, washed out ones with a new lid, reused lid or metal lidded jars that used to have things like red peppers in them? It would save me a lot of cash if I could reuse the hoard of jars for pressure canning. I use them for chutneys and jellies atm. 

Si_Clist

elaine241 said:

I have a huge stash of used jars in my shed. Do you use new Mason jars, washed out ones with a new lid, reused lid or metal lidded jars that used to have things like red peppers in them? It would save me a lot of cash if I could reuse the hoard of jars for pressure canning. I use them for chutneys and jellies atm. 

I'll be interested to see the answer to that.  FWIW we only use Kilner jars in the pressure canner, and by that I mean the proper old-style "dual-purpose" ones with the metal screw bands.  Lids are either Leifheit or genuine Kilner, and are re-used until either there's obvious signs of corrosion starting or the seal looks a bit iffy.  Whilst we keep re-using ordinary screw-top jars and their lids for longer than you might believe, that's only for the water-bath method and for jam.  We've never tried anything but Kilners in the pressure canner, simply because we have plenty of them.

Meanwhile, having committed to giving up next month the enormous allotment plot that we've had for the last 20-odd years, all fruit and veg production is moving to the garden, and this very morning I've just finished digging up the last patch of grass which was referred to as "The Lawn".
 
Yippee!  No more strimming the grass paths all round the allotment plot, no more cutting the grass tending the lawn at home, and a heck of a lot less weeding and watering to do.  And with that I must be off now to assist The Lady Wife get another three rows of spuds in where the grass lawn was.

C_J

I have a string bag!  I fill it with cabbages from the garden and hang it in the chicken coop, just high enough that the hens have to jump a little bit to peck at it.

DigForVictory

I have several string bags but the lads dislike them as they are "harder to pack", which I think translates to "the biscuits get home crushed". My challenges were how you conceal the emergency chocolate & any menstrual tackle, plus anything that needs to stay flat, like a card. (Oh my chaps, such delicate blossoms) Still, they have the right idea on fruit picking - the average bag for life can be smoothed out, rolled carefully then folded up to the handle & the handle looped around to keep each bag as a flat neat rectangle - nearly every coat pocket has one as standard & the lads recognise fruit in season and pick. OK they do then come home stained, smeared, prickled & (if seriously careless) torn but either laden or at least not wanting immediate food.

houseinafield

I'm a total beginner here Elaine. Si_Clist is your canning man. In fact I told my sister that he reuses lids and maybe she should too but apparently she does! She calls them flats, rather than lids, I think. So far I've used new Kilner jars which come with the two part lids - flats and screw tops. I bought them from Ebay but when I bought the canner, Wilko's was selling jars really cheaply and I bought loads. They didn't have lids and some online were saying they weren't good enough for pressure canning but again, my sister uses them and has had no problems. I think Hobbycraft are selling them at the moment too. I bought the flats from Amazon, aka China! Although you need to use the screw top to keep the flat lids in place during the actual canning process  they're removed after the jars cool so can be reused over and over. 
I have a lot of empty jars in all sizes, with the one piece metal lids, that once had jam, olives, pickles etc in them but I use them for storing dry goods. They can't be used for pressure canning.

LadOnTheHill

My recent prepping has been sorting out wood supplies for next winter and getting fruit trees/soft fruit bushes in. We have about twenty varieties of apples now, lots of single trees of each. It's going to take a few years for them to start fruiting, but at least we'll have a source of food which won't take much work, apart from pruning. Mostly we'll just leave them alone.

Has anyone out there ever used a freeze dryer? They're very expensive, but so is freeze dried food. Long term storage of food is looking more and more attractive, given the price rises. Freeze dried food is even more expensive, but a friend has been running a jam/chutney sales thing from her kitchen for years, and reckons I could do the same.

houseinafield

I just typed a long answer to your freeze drying question before my laptop decided to shut down. Please excuse a short answer. I have one on order - it takes months to get here from Harvest Right in the USA. They're the only company outside China that makes them. You can order directly from them but most in the UK order from The Dab Room, the only place in the UK that ships them here. There's a shipment due next month and the company usually buys more than customer orders so if you want one and don't want to wait 6 months plus for it to arrive, it might be a good idea to contact them. I watched many hours of videos on the dryer before deciding it would work for my long term storage plans. There is a FB group for British owners that's extremely helpful (British Family Freeze Drying). I agree with your friend btw.

AnimalTribe

I went to my favourite greengrocers yesterday. It's a long way away from where I live, but I was in the area. they were selling off blueberries at £1 a tray (4 kilos). So I spent the evening making a mass of jam, which will keep us going for quite a while. I managed some other bargains too. 

C_J

£1 for 4 kilos of blueberries is an amazing bargain!

AnimalTribe

C_J said:

£1 for 4 kilos of blueberries is an amazing bargain!

I was really pleased. I also bought a big tray of easy peel oranges for £2, but they look like they will last a while. I'm still fixing things in the garden that were damaged by the recent storms, but I finally got 2 raised beds sorted and I'll be planting some early peas. It's so nice to finally have some decent weather. Unfortunately, I went on a bit of a seed buying binge, as a lot of my current seed stash was getting old - still the new stock should last a while.