Using a Pressure Canner

May 14, 2013 By 4 Comments

I’ve been using a pressure canner for years. Although some foods can be canned in a water bath canner, other foods NEED to be canned using a pressure canner. Food safety is so important to me and it should be important to you too.

 

IMG 1161 225x300 Using a Pressure Canner

 

I never want to open a jar of home canned food and wonder if it is good to eat. Sometimes you can see signs of spoilage, but sometimes you cannot. I don’t want to feed anyone food that has been unsafely canned.

This makes me pretty ANAL about how I go about storing food. I take ZERO shortcuts, I make sure my equipment is clean and my lids and seals are in good shape. If there is rust on a ring, I toss it. Even though the ring is never in direct contact with the food, I still throw it out.

 

IMG 1954 300x225 Using a Pressure Canner

 

When I look at my stocked pantry, filled with homecanned foods like lamb stew, green beans, carrots, beets, pickles, jams, jellies and a lot of other items, I get such a sense of pleasure. Pleasure because I know exactly what is (and what isn’t) in my homecanned food. Pleasure because I love the look of all those pretty jars on the shelf. Pleasure because I can feed my family good healthy food that is safe to eat.

Are you as anal as I am when it comes to putting your food by? If not, you should be! Never take a chance – it is not worth it if someone you love gets sick, or even worse, dies from incorrectly canned food.

Read about how I home can salmon to learn the process I use for using the pressure canner.  If you want to learn how to can food using a water bath canner, check out my post on canning cherries. After reading these posts, think seriously about buying a canning book. The Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving is a really good resource.

51XmiSMwE8L SL110 Using a Pressure Canner

 

I’ve had my pressure canner for over 10 years and it still works great. I’m replacing the gasket this year and ordered it through Amazon.

So, if you’re new to the idea of preserving your own food, don’t be afraid. If I can do it, you can too. Just remember to always think of Safety First and by the end of this year’s harvest, you will be able to put your own home canned jars of great food in your pantry. If you have questions, please ask away in the Comment section.

Filed Under: Canning

What IS Self Sufficiency?

April 23, 2013 By

I’m checking out the pins over on our Self Sufficiency board on Pinterest. I can’t get over there every single day (at least right now) to remove pins that are inappropriate or just don’t fit with the description of the board.

 

01 225x300 What IS Self Sufficiency?

 

Oh, and I should mention about the photo that accompanies this post. I made it, so that I can post it over there and people who may not read this site will see it to learn what is a good pin and what is not.

I’m going to use some of the pins there to illustrate what IS and what IS NOT a good fit for the board. And, since we have over 18,000 pins (yikes!) we obviously have a lot of people who check out the board and pin the interesting things they find. It is great to have all kinds of Self Sufficiency information basically all in one place! If you haven’t been over there yet, I suggest you go and take a look. Best to have a cup of coffee with you though, as you may end up spending hours over there.

A few examples of what is allowed and not allowed:

Making Nutella Ice Cream – NO

How to Make a Candle Out of Olive Oil – YES

DIY Beehive in a Jar – YES

How to Stop the Police From Getting Into Your Home – NO

10 Weeds That Heal – YES

Regrowing Romain Lettuce - YES

How to Clean and Skin a Dead Snake – YES (even though I am personally biased against snakes icon smile What IS Self Sufficiency? I can’t even imagine why anyone would EAT one!

Make a Banana Cream Pie – NO

How to use your Halloween Pumpkin to Make a Pie – YES

 

Can you see where I am coming from? Self Sufficiency is an ideal that I believe we should all strive for. Will we ever be totally self sufficient? No. We will always need things to eat that don’t grow locally. We will always need to get some supplies from the hardware store. We will always need a community of like minded people, so that we can enjoy social relationships (and marry our children off).

Self Sufficiency is NOT the same thing as Emergency Preparedness, Prepping, TEOTWAWKI, (The End of the World As We Know It) or Survival.

While you will find that people who are self sufficient are generally quite prepared for emergencies, that doesn’t mean every self sufficient home can be called a Prepper’s Home.

Self Sufficiency is a goal, where a family (or an individual) tries to be less reliant on the system, government or the grocery store and more reliant on themselves. Growing your own food, heating your home with wood or solar, as opposed to using electricity all the time, raising your own meat – these are all examples of an attempt at self sufficiency. I hope more and more people will begin to see a self sufficient lifestyle as a possibility for themselves. I would be very happy if people stopped eating all the processed crap that fills their shopping carts.

Weeds can be medicines and so can eating healthy, non GMO foods. How much healthier would we all be if we stopped eating food that is packaged in a box? Can you even imagine the healthy children that will come from that kind of lifestyle?

Back to the board….as the moderator of the Pinterest board, I certainly do have pins where I really have to think about whether they should be allowed or deleted. There is a pin on there now called Sighting in Your Rifle – I am leaving that pin alone because a lot of self sufficient people hunt for their meat. But there is no reason at all for someone to post pins about automatic weapons (and yes, I have removed plenty of those).

So please, follow along and check out the pins. If you would like an invitation so that you can post pins to the board, please send me a message over on our Facebook page. When I was getting the Self Sufficiency board up and running, I invited everyone who followed. Then the response started growing so fast (as in more than 300 a day!) and I couldn’t keep up with the invites.

Just keep in mind what is appropriate for the board, ok? Please feel free to leave me a comment here on this post or over on our Facebook page and let me know what YOUR thoughts on Self Sufficiency are!

Filed Under: Our Pinterest Boards
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