Today Bookman and I had a canning adventure. Last week I mentioned we went to the urban farm store and got ourselves a pressure canner and canning jars. We have so many beans in the freezer and so many more still in the garden that we had to take steps. Canning is easier and cheaper than buying one of those big chest freezers to put in the basement and should the power ever go out, I don’t have to worry about all my beans and other things thawing out.
Today Bookman cleaned the canner and all its parts and we both read the operating instructions and checked the canning book regarding canning beans and well, we got to work. Bookman had thawed the beans we had in the freezer and together with beans I had picked last Sunday, we filled six quart jars. The beans are already steamed so we poured hot water into the jars and closed them up. Then we put them in the canner which is so big it held them all quite nicely. The instructions said to put three quarts of water in the canner but it just didn’t look like much so we put in five quarts. We know now it really would have been fine with only three.
Onto the stove and Bookman latched down the lid and turned on the burner. You leave the little vent thingy open until it starts to steam and then for another ten minutes. Then we put the pressure regulator cap thing over the steam pipe and stood there watching the pressure gauge. Nothing happened. Watched pot and all that. So we set a timer and went to check after two minutes and the pressure had started to build. And it kept going. We needed 11 pounds of pressure and once it started building up it got there pretty quick. But then it kept going and we ended up turning the burner on the stove way down and that worked out just fine. After 25 minutes we turned the burner off and let it all cool.The canner has a little pop up knob to let you know when there is pressure inside even if it doesn’t register on the gauge. There is no opening of the canner while there is still pressure, that would be bad. So we waited for things to cool and eventually the knob dropped. But wait, the instructions say to wait another ten minutes with the pressure regulator cap removed so steam can get out. So we waited. Then very carefully Bookman unlatched the lid and opened it away from us. And we both peered inside.
We set the still very hot and wet jars on a towel on the counter to cool. Within five minutes we heard the “tlink!” sound of the lid on one of the jars getting sucked down. This is a very important sound when canning, it means your jar just sealed itself. Within the next twenty minutes all the jars went “tlink!” one by one. Freaked the cats out a bit because they had no idea what the noise was and Bookman and I would get excited at each “tlink!” The canned beans will keep on a shelf for a year, just long enough for us to be picking fresh beans from the garden again.I picked more beans yesterday that will amount to another two, maybe three jars. And there will be more next week. The bean plants are starting to look tired though, not as many flowers and some of the leaves are turning yellow. So I expect a big bowl next week and then a sharp decline. Thank goodness!
The zucchini is still going too. Bookman made us some zucchini fritters this week. He veganized them from a non-vegan recipe I found on the internet. They came out so good! They are like potato latkes only with zucchini. He made enough for two meals. The first evening we weren’t sure what to put on them and so tried a little ketchup (don’t laugh!). It was good but then they were so much like latkes that the next evening I put applesauce on mine and wow! So good. I don’t like (vegan) sour cream but if you do, they would be good with that too.
But we still have so much zucchini. The canning books say you can’t can plain old zucchini, it has to be pickled or turned into relish or even a marmalade sort of jelly. Bookman did some searching to try and find other ways to use zucchini and found a recipe for this delicious looking spread that we are going to try.
The weather has turned yucky hot and humid. It is currently 95F (35.5C) out as I type this. We are to expect that and as much as five degrees warmer through Wednesday. It has been so very dry that our rain barrel is empty and we have had to resort to watering with the hose. Some things in the garden are getting a little crispy but we can only do so much. Of course the tomatoes and peppers are loving this heat and it looks like we might actually get a few bell peppers after all. That is if after this heat we don’t get a sudden change to cold and have an early frost. Fingers crossed.
No new flowers blooming this week in late summer. The star at the moment are the prairie grasses which are blooming. Along with the heat we have had a hot breeze and grass looks great with the wind moving through it. I discovered my ipad takes video so here is a short clip of the wind in the grass. The first really tall grass is big bluestem. It’s not quite 2 meters tall. The shorter grass is little bluestem, it’s a bit less than a meter tall. In the fall, these grasses will turn a lovely shade of pink before going dormant and turning brown. I have no idea where the microphone on my ipad is and it got some of the wind in it, sorry about that. Okay, so let’s see how this goes:
And yes, I had to create my own YouTube channel. Wow! I’ve hit the big time! I called my channel So Many Books so I might also have to do some book video sometime too. I guess I had better learn how to do it better. Then next gardening season I can try making a few videos instead of just still photos. That might be fun. I’ve gone multimedia! Has a monster just been created? 😀
I am in awe of anyone who not only grows their own food, but cans it for the winter. Wow.
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Jeane, it’s not so very hard to preserve food and it is fun to do and in my area not so very uncommon. The farm store offers canning classes and they all filled up. But I learned to can from my Grandma and mom so I owe them for that!
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I love that little “tink” sound the cans make at the end, to reassure you they’re done right. I haven’t done much canning- jams and green beans is about all so far. Oh, how I miss my big garden!
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Jeane, isn’t it a great sound? So very satisfying. I’ve canned pickles, beets, apple butter and applesauce but never beans before. It was so easy! I am already planning a garden expansion for next year. I hope sometime you will have a big garden again.
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Big and Little Bluestem Prairie Grass waving at me first thing in the morning; poetry in motion. What a lovely present.
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Cath, gosh, thanks. Glad you enjoyed it 🙂
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I’m in awe too of someone who manages to grow anything. My attempts at growing onions were pitiful. They came out the same size they were when planted. I tried tomatoes instead and after weeks of careful nurturing had the pleasure of picking one at a time since none of them managed to ripen in synch.
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I love the video and SMB on Youtube sounds great! I hope Waldo and Dickens have a place in the great tradition of cats on video.
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Ian, thanks! Heh, I hadn’t even thought of Waldo and Dickens. They just might have to join the legions of cat video on the internet!
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BookerTalk, The beans have done really well this year, I’m quite pleased. For some reason I have a hard time growing bulbing vegetables. I’ve never been able to get a decent beet out of the garden. I am afraid to try onions but I just might next year. I’ll be adding lots of compost in an attempt to fix whatever the problem is. Tomatoes are fickle things. I’ve had years where they go and go and go and then this year when I have hardly any. Gardening is a lot of trial and error and luck.
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Such pretty jars! Isn’t it exciting to think that come January when it is cold and snowy out, you will be able to open a jar of this summer’s sunshine in the form of your beans from the garden? If I lived closer I would offer to buy a few off you! 🙂 I would love to learn how to make preserves. What else are you going to can? And I love your video–very cool–pretty soon you are going to have nature videos up–or you could give us a tour of your books! It is hot here too with no cool down in sight. All through next week (until the very end when it might be in the 80s again) it is all mid to upper 90s. I knew we would pay for those nice days. I think I may be sleeping on the sofa this week as my upstairs is already way too warm and toasty (even with A/C). Ugh. Bring on fall please! Thanks for sharing your gardening/canning experiences–I live vicariously through my friends you know.
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Danielle, Thanks! It is nice to think having food from my garden in the middle of winter. If you lived closer I would gift you with a jar! We will be canning pumpkin and apple butter and apple sauce. We are still three or four weeks away from that though. If we had gotten an abundance of tomatoes we had planned on salsa and pasta sauce but not this year. Glad you liked the video. I was indeed thinking of small book tours 🙂 Your weather forecast is very much like mine: miserable. A good excuse for lots of ice cream 🙂
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This morning I was carefully reading that Giraldi article you linked to when DH said, “Vanessa, can you help me can the jalapenos?” At 7:00 AM? Really? Thankfully, we only had to hot water pack them and they took very little time. I have yet to pressure can; I read your post with delight. Those gems of jars look fantastic. I never thought of the responses cats would give to the “tlink” sound.
I’ll bookmark your bluestem video for when things get stressful at the office. The effect is very calming.
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Vanessa, oh canned jalapenos! Bookman didn’t want to grow any hot peppers this year, just as well since they probably wouldn’t have done well with the cool wet spring. Next year though, I think there will be some spice in the garden. Pressure canning turned out to be super easy and it didn’t make the kitchen hot either. I worried it would with all that steam. Glad you liked the bluestem video!
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I love the video! And the canning adventures… I’m not sure I’m going to get much more than the 4 pints of tomatoes I did a few weeks ago… unless I get a crazy late-season burst of tomatoes. Not as many as I’d like this year. I don’t have a pressure canner so it takes a long time to do the tomatoes, but I love canning. My parents used to do it all the time and we had a few break over the years so I’m always wary. But I have to make some more marmalade this year so I’d better not hang up my canning hat yet this year! I love your gardening posts, I’m so glad you guys are expanding so much!
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wherethereisjoy, thanks! We are so happy the pressure canning turned out to be so easy and they beans came out so nicely. The final test of course will be in a few months when we open a jar to eat. We’ve gotten only one tomato from the garden so far. There are a few green ones out there but this year has not been a tomato year. Isn’t canning such a satisfying undertaking? And next year’s garden, we have big expansion plans!
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