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11.05.2010

Are you a canner?

I have only canned once in my life and it was this past spring. I made strawberry jam. It was/is delicious.

Like, the best jam ever. Never mind that it has about 6 cups of sugar and lots and lots of strawberries.

I am pretty sure the reason is was so good was because I made it.
Me.
In my tiny kitchen. 

OK, yes it was the delicious strawberries and sugar that made it good but who cares. Not me. I won't be buying the stuff at the store again.

Homemade jam is so much better. Aaaaand I know what is it in.

Have you ever noticed how hard store brand jams and jellies are to spread? I guess I never noticed until I made my own. They spread without ripping the fresh bread to shreds.

I bought a bunch of green beans at the store over the summer while they were cheap and I had ever intention of canning them.

I ended up throwing them away.

All 10,000 lbs of them.

Actually only about 8 lbs but still... that was like 6 bucks worth of beans that I could had made into food for my family.

The reason I didn't can them was because I don't have a canner. I wanted to purchase one but then realized I would need an expensive one since we have a glass top stove. I can't use those cheap ones on glass top stove.

Who knew? Apparently not me.

I could have improvised with a large stock pot like I did for making the jam, but my pots just weren't tall enough to fit jars and still have them covered with enough water to ensure proper sealing.

Fast-forward to today and low and behold I found a place in our city that will help you can food!

Here is a little exerpt from their website.

... the Canning Center provides an institutional kitchen environment.  All equipment necessary for canning is provided onsite.  Users provide their own ingredients. 
... The client list includes Duval County residents, boaters, various churches, people on restricted diets, non-profit organizations within the city, the 4-H School Enrichment Program and other governmental agencies.

It's not free, but if a large group of people got together to make food for their families to share, it would totally be worth it. Like a co-op type thing.

The canning center provides ALL the equipment to can. All you have to do is bring the ingredients and jars. How easy is that??!!

They also occasionally have workshops that teach people how to can soups.

Depending on whether or not I break down and buy an expensive canner, I may just give this place a try. Our kitchen is small tiny and it was a little cramped while I was canning the jam.

It would be a nice change to actually cook in an industrial sized kitchen!

I may never want to go back to my little tiny kitchen. (when I say tiny, I mean it. I have less than 3 ft of counter-top space.)

Signed,

Hopelessly needs a bigger kitchen and flat bottomed canner

2 people had something to say:

Wendy said...

We had big canning plans this year. Big plans. Yeah.

Casey said...

Yeah we did too. Out of all the plants on the back porch... I "havested" 3 cherry tomatoes. And they were sour.