Tag: Canning

Canning Upgrade

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In my home, I have an old school stove, but it’s very old. I know when it fails I will be upgrading to a glass top. Because I do jam canning, I know I will NOT be putting those heavy canners on a glass top. Add to that, I have a really hard time dealing with such a large pot of water with my reduced abilities.

This led me down a rabbit whole looking for a solution. I found the Ball Water Bath Canner. (Not an affiliate link.)

I just happened to have it on my price watch and found it had gone on sale for $174. It’s normally $234. That’s $60 off. I am all about the sale. Camel Camel Camel price watches said it was the lowest price, so I scooped it up.

It’s very weird to be in a situation where I have a permanent home. I’ve moved so much in rentals that I was never able to justify owning something I only used once a year. We often lived in super tiny apartments to keep rental costs down. Owning a home means we are now buying the things we want because we have space. I would have never bought such a large item in a rental.

Initially, I was worried about this water bath canner because it’s electronic. You can toss your jars in, and it thinks out all the timing for you.

However, it worked just fine after I figured out how to do it. It was super easy, and for someone that’s partially disabled? Being able to use the pour spout to get rid of the water afterwards was amazing. No more trying to haul it up and over to the sink. That was always a dicey proposition for me.

Here she is, in all her glory.

My only real concern is that water spout sticks out a lot, and I was worried long term storage might be an issue, so I stored it in the box it came in to prevent accidentally snapping it off. I would not want to ruin my jammy investment.

Since I now had this, I decided to make some marmalade. My wife loves it, and I have never done it before.

I used this ball recipe.

It says it makes 6 (8oz) half pint jars, but I ended up with 9. My oranges were HUGE.

I prepped 8 jars, and just used the 9th straight to the fridge.

Marmalade!

My experience with the Ball electric water bath canner was good. Once I let go of my worry about the process it really did simplify things for me. I was impressed that my prepped jars just hung at the right temp indefinitely. Every little bit it would remind me they were ready, but it held them just fine.

I found it easier to deal with due to my disability than a regular water canner. Just being able to pour out water into a pan when done was so much easier. If you aren’t that strong, or have issues effecting your ability to haul a giant pot around, this is not a bad solution.

I have not tested the giant steamer option, but that’s an option too. Maybe someday I will make a stack of bao rolls in it. It’s sized well for steaming big batches.

The recipe was good too. If you’ve never made marmalade before, be prepare for lots of prep work. Chopping peals, removing seeds, and prepping the fruit. It takes a while.

The recipe is nice, but the jam is a little less stiff than I’d like, but still amazing. It is a little bitter? Not bad at all, but if you are sensitive to that, you might want to prep your peels differently.

Over all, this was a great purchase, and it worked really well. If you can’t lift easily, and this is well worth it.

Frozen Tomato Harvest

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I did some tomato sauce processing this morning. I actually had two big giant batches. I had my dutch oven and my big pot going together at one point. The pictures below is after I cleaned it mostly up and it was just simmering down with the last batch. There was tom sauce literally everywhere before I cleaned, so I’ll keep that mess as a memory snapshot.

Toma Toes sauce and jars waiting to be filled.

In hindsight, with ten 16oz jars I could have canned it up, but I think I need more research. Since I don’t eat onions or garlic because they are my mortal gastroenterology enemy, it makes finding approved and safe recipes harder. So many of them have so many onions in them.

I also don’t really want to add any acid to them, like you would do with water batch or pressure canning, because my wife has GERD already. I don’t need to throw more fuel on that fire.

Instead, I just blanched them like before, and peeled and cored out the stems. I then just cooked them down. I initially mashed them with a potato masher, and when I had cooked them down to a close to desired thickness, I used my immersion blender to blend the remaining solid toms, and some basil and green onions in from the garden. (Green onions don’t have it in for me, so I can reasonably eat those.)

Then I just filled the jars, labeled and froze them.

Tomato sauce filling 16 oz jars.

I am initially freezing them in the house freezer, but then I will take some out to the chest freezer later, as I won’t have to worry about them falling over then.

Ten jars of Toma Toes sauce waiting to freeze in the freezer. Also, so many Costco corn dogs. So so many.

My last task fo the day is reheating some of the pickle brine I had left over from last time, and doing one last 16 oz jar of pickles with the last of my cucumbers from the garden.

Brine and cucumbers slices waiting to become refrigerator pickles.

I did not get a big enough harvest of these, or enough at one time to even bother with canning pickles. Refrigerator pickles work just as well, and are just as good.

Now, that I am done, I am going down for a good long nap. I am still exhausted from surgery. It’s very true, when you get over 50, these things take longer to come back from.

Change of Plans – From Canning to Freezing

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One weeks garden harvest of tomatoes. Ignore the random cucumber, it’s for a sandwich.

First issue, is this is over a week of my tomato harvest. If I wait any longer to do anything with them, I will lose them. It’s just not worth canning up 1 or 2 jars at a time. Second, I have a few dietary restrictions that make things challenging.

Somewhere around my late 40s I just stopped being able to digest garlic and onions. Like full stop, does not work. I did not know what this was until a gal that was on the FODMAP diet talked about it with me. I am not a speciality diet kind of guy so I had always assumed this was another weird fad.

Turns out, it is not. I have an issue with garlic and it has a vendetta against me that is biblical in proportions. Onions, are a close second. I just can’t eat them anymore which sucks because my favorite soup is French onion soup, and I don’t think I cooked with out garlic and onions since I was 16 years old.

Turns out the FODMAP thing has some elements that work for me, so while I do eat out and end up with garlic in my food I use Fodmate and that keeps it to a low rumble, literally. I don’t want to make my own food with garlic or onions at all though.

This is one of the reasons I really prefer to cook at home. It’s just easier to keep garlic and onions out of everything that way.

This complicates things for me when I do canning with approved recipes. A lot of the tomato based recipes are like 50% onions. It’s easy to omit the garlic, but not so much the onions. I am so new to canning I just don’t feel safe water bath canning anything not in my books, either. I just don’t want to adjust recipes.

My garden has a lot of tomatoes, but when I looked up the Ball book recipe it would take 2 and 2/3 pounds of tomatoes for each 16 oz canning jar for the crushed tomato recipe. That’s the only one that doesn’t have an overwhelming mass of onions. Canning for 1 or 2 jars just doesn’t seem worth it.

So this morning I switched gears, and looked up freezing. I have a chest freezer, and turns out you can freeze your canning jars. Everything I have searched for says they will retain flavor for 12 months, but some folks say they have used them from the freezer up to 3 years later.

All this means, is when I finally get an electrician to run power to the shed, I will be buying a much larger freezer for in there.

Processing tomatoes for freezing. Finished tomatoes on the left, a boiling pot of water, cored tomatoes on a towel, and a batch of ice water with recently boiled up tom’s, and finally a cutting board with recently cored tomatoes.

This took me like 20 minutes total to do. I cored them, boiled them for 1 minute, then tossed them in ice water, and peeled them and put them in my 16oz canning jars.

Four 16 oz wide mouth canning jars with tomatoes in there. Also seen is endless bags of breakfast sausage from Costco, and frozen leftover rhubarb for jamming. That will be made into a pie by the wife today, along with Costco corndogs, and some cool whip and ice cream. This is the house freezer, not the chest freezer in the shed.

I was a little worried about headroom. It said to give an inch so I was hoping I left enough? I crammed them all in, and it looked good. I checked this morning, and it froze beautifully. Like now when my wife makes Indian and needs a can of tomatoes, we have them. I think we use them in curries most of all, so this is exciting. I am ecstatic to have my own food that I grew ready to use.

Jam and Garden Update

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I managed to make Jam last Friday. I took it easy all week, so I could do it.

This is fifteen jars of strawberry rhubarb jam. I could not have done it without over six pounds of rhubarb my real estate gal brought over to me. I got up super early and hit the business version of Costco at 7am, and grabbed the strawberries. So far, in my area, Costco has better fruit than anywhere, and it’s cheaper in bulk.

I was up and jamming, done by 10:30am, and back to bed for the rest of the day! That’s definitely a success because I got it done. Baby steps!

As for the garden? See for yourself.

My garden is looking good. You’ll notice I am missing broccoli in the upper left bed. I harvested it, and then all it was doing was attracting cabbage moths like crazy. I decided to pulled it. It will compost it down for next years beds. My bush tomatoes are going crazy in the back. Even with careful pruning I am no match for them.

My cucumbers on the lower left are also doing amazing. I hope I have a lot to can as pickles!

This is my old broccoli bed. It was planted with beet seeds that I soaked overnight. I also laid out some of that Rainbird irrigation tubing so I can keep them watered with the rest of the garden.

I was using the dripper ends on the broccoli going to each plant, but honestly, I prefer the drip lines. They provide enough water, and may not go to each plant, but setting up individual drippers takes time, and is hard on me to hunch over and get it sorted out. This takes minutes and works just as well.

This right here? That is the first tomato of the season. Getting the 55 day tomato seeds from botanical interests really allowed me to hedge my bets. I got a version called Glacier from Botanical Interests which is a semi-determinate, whatever that really means is up in the air for me.

I have ordered seeds from a few different places, but I find Botanical Interests has way better packets, and has information on the plants inside the packets too. Plus, I feel I get a higher germination rate on their seeds. One of the guys who runs that business has a Youtube channel called Epic Gardening. He has good videos, and tutorials, and explanations on there, with a generous side of sales. That’s how I learned about Botanical Interests, so I guess it worked out.

I am in zone 8b, and am closer to the coast. I am in a weird little microclimate that is always breezy too. Like you could be blocked on either side, but our little valley is constantly just a little breezy to outright windy. In this heat, that is a bonus.

While I am not a fan of temperatures above 70F, my garden is loving it. I have been in the Pacific Northwest my entire life, and we hit record temps all July, and are looking to do it for August as well. I figure since this is happening, my beets may get a good bit of sun and warmth to grow up.

This is the first time I have ever had this much space, and a lot of the plants I am growing are first time plants. I am shocked and pleased at how well it’s all going.

Disability and Jam Making

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My real estate gal, who sold us the house we are in, is an absolute hero. She got the sale despite multiple bids, by telling the seller our history. We are first time home owners, and we’ve both been homeless as kids. That we’ve fought our entire lives, and now that we can buy a house, we didn’t have enough to win a bid war of any kind.

The owner was older, and he chose our bid because he wanted to give us a chance, and even left us a lawn mower, and extra light bulbs, and fridge filters. The guy was a saint.

She still comes and checks in on us from time to time, and last weekend she brought me some rhubarb. My rhubarb plants are tiny, and won’t be ready for harvest for a year or more and she’s a gardener too, and had enough to spare. I was very touched by her gifts.

6.5 pounds of cleaned and cut rhubarb!

My plan was not to do more jam canning until this coming Friday, but with the lovely gift, I felt I should probably do it Sunday anyways. So I went to bed Saturday night fully intending on getting to the store in the morning.

Unfortunately for me, my body was not cooperative. Standing all day and jam canning on Friday, after a full work week was already as much as I could do. I woke up Sunday, and that was it. I was done. I was already sore upon waking. I would have liked to be able to just go go go, but I have a disability and sometimes I just can’t.

Then, I remember I could process the rhubarb by freezing it, and could do the jam this weekend. That gave me days to rest up in preparation for this.

Processing rhubarb.

I cleaned, and cut up all the rhubarb. I peeled the bigger stalks, but left the smaller ones whole. I laid them out on cookie sheets and froze them in batches.

I then packed them into freezer ziplock. I packed two jam bags with the exact amount I need for the jam I am making, and I still have pounds of it leftover. My wife is thinking of making a pie out of some of it. This is honestly garden gold right here.

Sometimes you can only do what you can do. I do have a physical disability, but it would be the same if my disability wasn’t physical in nature. Sometimes you just have to slow down. I have to remind myself that it’s okay to slow down.

I am trying to give myself the grace I would give someone else. If someone came to me and said I can’t do this today. I am already sore, and it might push me into a painful situation where I will go to work the next day and struggle? I’d totally give them the out.

But I think it’s harder to give ourselves that same grace. It’s easy to tell ourselves we can power through, that everyone else is fine, why not us? It think that is a hidden struggle with disability, especially if you have an invisible one.

When I first started having problems with my joints, I did that all the time. It ended up with me in pain, flat on my back. Now, if I slow down, and just do what I can? It just works out better.

I am still going to get that rhubarb jam made, but it will be on my timeline, when I am able. That’s okay.

Blueberry Jam and Syrup

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Yesterday was blueberry canning day. We got up super early, and went to the business Costco that is open at 7am. We bought 8 flats of 18oz blueberries. We only needed 6.5 flats, but that meant we could have blueberry smoothies, and my wife can make a blueberry cobbler later. We paid under $40 for all of them.

As an aside, I have purchased canning berries all over town. Trader Joes, Fred Meyers, QFC, and some farmers market stands. They don’t hold a candle to the quality and price of Costco where I am at.

I used two recipes:

  • Blueberry Syrup – Ball complete Book of Home Preserving – page 193
  • Blueberry Jam – Ball Back to Basics – page 63

I only use ball or USDA recipes. I follow them religiously, as if my life depended on it. Which it kind of does with canning, because botulism is not how I want to end my time on earth.

The first thing I did was prep the syrup blueberries because they have to drain for like 2+ hours. I used one of those jelly bag rigs that you can buy on amazon, (not an affiliate link) and just set it up on a bowl to drain. It was a rather macabre scene, and I felt like a witch making a potion.

This actually took more like 4 hours and it probably could have been left a few more.

There are recipes like Ball’s 2-in-1 that lets you make blueberry butter with the solids that remain, but honestly, I tasted the solids after I let it drain. They taste flat, and are all the flavor is very reduced. I just composted the solids that were left in the bag, which was quite a bit more than I expected. My compost bin now looks like a murder scene.

Once that was set up, I then started with the blueberry jam. My jam recipe was small, so I had to do it twice to get the yield I wanted. That was fine. I was expecting to take the day for this.

The biggest amount of time was the water bath heating up. I had to toss the water and start over between the second jam load and the syrup because jam got into the water, and crystalized sugar on all the jars.

Syrup on the stove, and jam cooling on the towel.

The syrup took longer than I expected because my recipe called for heating it to 230F. My wife kept assuring me it takes a while because she’s a candy maker and baker, but this took FOREVER. It was also getting into afternoon and my house was already hot. I am not a patient man when I am sweating.

My jam turned out perfect, but the syrup was very thick. I think between how long it took to boil, and the pectin in the fruit, it ended up thickening up. I basically ended up with 8oz jars of blueberry syrup concentrate.

To remedy this, I made up a simple syrup of 1/2 cup water to 1/2 cup sugar, and added that to my 8oz jar of syrup for the fridge. It did not dilute the blueberry flavor at all.

Costco restaurant squeezie bottles for the win!

Just listening to the canning jars POP when they sealed was cool as hell. Every time a jar popped I ran to my wife and told her. She apparently thinks I am cute when I do this. It’s the best part of canning. It’s when you know you did it right.

We tested the syrup out this morning when I made waffles.

WAFFLES!

These were great. Like the raspberry and strawberry jam, the flavors are through the roof. I cannot buy jam that tastes this good. You just can’t. It’s not blueberry flavoring, but real blueberries. It’s tart and sweet, and so fresh tasting.

I don’t know if I can go back to buying jam. It’s just not the same.

Canning Jars Have Arrived

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All my canning jars have arrived. I have some more 8 oz and 4 oz ones, but I have a plan for this next month that will be canning heavy.

My canning list is as follows:

  • Blueberry Jam
  • Blueberry Syrup – for pancakes!
  • Blackberry Jam
  • Raspberry Jam
  • Strawberry Jam
  • Marmalade
  • Pickles – from the garden.
  • Tomato sauce/paste/in general – from the garden. I don’t know what form this will be in, but boy howdy! will there be a lot of tomatoes this year!

The raspberry and strawberry are on the end of the jam list because I still have some from the last time.

We eat a lot of jam, though. We have it on toast, with peanut butter, and on waffles and pancakes. It’s also good with crackers on a cheese plate. Discovering home canned jam was like a doorway into accelerated jam use. From my estimate we have probably doubled how much we eat now. I’m cool with that. It’s easy and fun to make.

My plan is to maybe do some this weekend, and then try for two jams at a time until we are done with the jam and syrup list for the year.

Marmalade is new to me, so I have to figure that out. My wife loves orange marmalade. I have a recipe and will figure it out. I use pretty exclusively Ball recipes because there are some very dangerous canning directions online, and I am not really okay with sources that are not Ball or the US government preservation sites. Botulism is not the end I want, so I am going to stick to safe recipes.

I have never done pickles or tomatoes. I just have them growing in my garden, and wanted to water bath can some for the year.

That’s super ambitious, but I am into it. We will see how far I get on my plan, but I am all set up and ready to go.

Canning Costs

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Okay, so since I do a bit of data analysis for a living, I was curious as to how things broke out on my recent canning adventure price-wise.

It turns out, it’s cheaper to can your own jams. This is probably because I like Bonne Maman preserves, so I was comparing it to that, and not the cheapest available option in the grocery store.

I had assumed it might be more expensive. I ended up quite a bit cheaper, due to the recent inflation.

Start up costs were not taken into account. I bought a cheap canning kit off Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0BC5FKBHX/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&th=1

As well as three Ball brand canning cookbooks. They were free due to that e-credit Amazon gives you for being patient on your deliveries.

I also bought two cases of canning jars, three if you count the Verones ones that I disliked.

I’d estimate in start up costs I paid around $100 all said and done, but I ket to keep all that to continue using going forward, so I am considering that an investment and a sunk cost. I just didn’t feel like depreciating that over the life of the canning equipment.

I think, this outcome would not have been the same pre-pandemic and pre-corporate greed fiasco. Every product on the market is showing what happens when corporate greed goes unfettered. This makes making my own jam several dollars cheaper for 8 oz container. If companies weren’t shitty capitalist nightmares, I would have broken even at best.

Lawn Terrorism & Other plant and food updates

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-Originally posted on Tumblr

My lawn was destroyed this winter. Part fo the reason is they used garbage fill dirt to level the yard, front and back. This means the dirt is filled with roofing shingles, plastic, metal nails, bear bottles, and ripped up beer cans.

Add to this, that we had a couple feral cats decide the front lawn was thier litter box, and I swear they dug up half the front lawn before I figured out what was up.

I love cats, so I just go out every time I see them in the lawns and since they are feral and the neighbors across the street are taking care of them, they have stuck to that side of the street lately.

To fix this, my wife and I bought 5 pounds of white clover seeds. I don’t like grass. It’s ecologically crappy, grows fast, and requires a lot of mowing. I hate mowing. Clover is also good for the soil, and returns nitrogen to it.

Planting clover is like ecological terrorism because I am sure my neighbors with nice manicured lawns are not going to be happy if it takes hold and spreads.

I am a shit neighbor, because I just planted it out. I have hated grass, to a weird spectrum-y level for as long as I remember. It’s creepy. It’s ecologically a poor idea. I am going to be shit neighbor and grow clover.

My raspberry jam worked out except for one 4 oz jar. We will just eat that first. I am on to strawberry jam today. I have to make some berry pancake syrup but I will plan that out and do that next time. Also, QFC did not have corn syrup which my recipe called for and I am not searching all over town for it.

I swear, I feel like I live in a 3rd world country. I can’t get tater tots or hash brown patties. Tahini is gone, and now corn syrup. I never know what product is going to be unavailable week to week. Hell, I have only seen oyster mushrooms in grocery stores once since the whole pandemic began.

Once my garden is established I should figure out mushrooms.

This is my broccoli. I planted it way too late in the season, but we will see how it goes!

My red cabbage is peaking out too. It was also planted way too late in the season, so I am watching it as well.

I bought some strawberry shoots off Etsy. I literally know nobody in my area, so I could not bum a shoot or two off of anyone. I bought 10, and they gave me 12, and they are already starting to perk up after 24 hours. Here’s hoping next year I have a good strawberry crop. I am glad I got the Etsy ones.

My green onions are not coming up yet, so I planted my grocery store green onions. I saw a video where someone did that and it worked out really well, so I am just going to do that with the last bunch I have in the fridge when I cut them down, and we will see how it goes.

Still no sign of life from my tomatoes. I am worried about them. If nothing happens in a week or so, I will buy some tomato starts from a nursery.

In all, this is going really really well. Buying a home has opened a whole world for me that I could not image being a part of. I am still angry that not everyone gets this chance.

Being able to garden, and having kitchen big enough to can? I think some folks don’t understand the incredible privilege it is to have that kind of space. I could not have done this in my last 564 square foot apartment. I couldn’t even afford to store canning materials I was only going to use once a year do to space constraints.

I am so grateful I can do this. I don’t think I will ever take this for granted.

Gendered Canning

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See my first strawberry jam attempt? Turns out, like the raspberry jam, it tastes far better than any jam I have ever had from the store in the last decade.

I ended up making some gender based observations this weekend. My goal was to can up some raspberry and strawberry jam this weekend, and yesterday I went ahead and bought a stupid amount of raspberries and strawberries to do it.

I am new at this, and wasn’t sure what constituted 5 crushed cups of fruit, so this saw me in the check out line with six containers of strawberries and four of raspberries.

The cashier was a bit odd about it, and asked what I was doing with so much fruit, and I said I was canning.

I am a 51 year old, heavily tattooed man. I am also transgender, but she would not know that to look at me.

Instead she was completely bewildered that I was canning jam. She nosed around why, and I said becuase it tastes better than anything store bought, and you can’t even buy some of the flavors.

Then she asked if I was doing it as a gift with someone, presumably a wife or mother, by implication of her wording. I said nope. Just me, canning jam for the year for my wife and I.

I then stopped at a regular grocery store for sugar, and bought a single 10 pound bag. I was asked why I was buying so much sugar by the clerk and the bagger, and I said I was canning jam.

The bagger, a young man, was completely gobsmacked. He was like why? Did you pick a bunch of berries? I said it was too early in the season for that, but I was making a years worth this weekend.

Before I transitioned 11 years ago, I don’t recall anyone caring at all what I bought for food, and being a weird quasi-foodie that does a lot of odd ball things from scratch? I have purchased some empirically odd food combinations in really large crazy amounts before. Nobody has ever said a word.

Now that I am read as a man? It’s like my very existence beyond buying beer and snacks is read as odd, and worth further questioning.

It reminds me of the first weekend of the pandemic. I was in the grocery store with my wife stocking up on things, and being the primary cooks I had the cart stocked. The lines were stupid, so I sent my wife with the cart to the line while I grabbed a loaf of bread and some beer.

A middle aged gal saw me walking back to the line juggling a loaf of bread and several IPA’s, and just made eye contact and smirked at me. I knew instantly she thought we were in the middle of a national emergency, and this dumb dude was buying nothing more than bread and beer. She was laughing, and I am sure I presented a hilarious picture in the half panicked grocery store.

It’s such a weird gendered construct that men can’t cook or or take care of the home.

I find I also get questioned a lot more in fabric and craft stores. I still sew, and make clothing for my wife and I, and now I get questioned a lot more in fabric stores. I think there is a social construct for the gay designer archetype, so if I look competent they immediately shoot me into the expert category. It’s like there is no middle ground in perception. I am a dumb man who is invading women’s spaces or I am a gay expert. The truth is I am a confident middle of the road seamster, that is bi/pan, and is married to a woman.

Conversely, I am treated way better at Lowe’s Hardware, and any of the other hardware stores I end up in. People just assume I can do the work I am asking about. They start from an assumption of competence first, then back up if I tell them I need more information.

This is in stark contrast from when I looked like a woman. I have literally had hardware store guys argue with me over basic information I was 100% correct about, because they assumed anything that came out of my feminine mouth must be wrong.

I just find it interesting what people seem to expect is so gendered. Maybe we could just abolish useless gendering of activities, and I think we’d all be better off.