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Can-a-thon Project Report 1

The first canner load is going. It's 16 pints, not 18. Seems I can only get 8 per layer when I use wide-mouth jars. I should know that, but.........

There are 4 jars of ground beef, 9 jars of roast beef, and 3 jars of beans. I had the ground beef browning while I sawed away at those chuck and rump roasts to break them down to stew meat size. Like i said earlier, they're "cheap" roasts. But they'll turn out nice and tender after 75 minutes cooking under pressure. I didn't intend to do the beans but my body ran out of gas. So far today i've stopped for a couple of cups of coffee and a piece of homemade fudge. I need some sort of "fuel"--my facial muscles are twitching and my right shoulder/neck tried to spasm but I changed positions quickly which, for the moment, saved me. I brought the beef box in from the garage. I found 5 pounds of high quality (pasture raised/grass fed) ground beef I got on a manager's markdown. I was hoping to save that as is to make some meatloaves. I guess that idea is gone now. I'll can 1 pound and try to make up as much of the rest as hamburger patties, assuming I can get them into the fridge freezer. If not, I'll have to can that stuff up as well. 

I did what I didn't want to do. I went out and just grabbed some things from the garage. I really wanted to get some things defrosting for the next canner round. I brought in one pound of ground turkey and the little pork roast. I still need to bring in the pork and chicken boxes for a better inventory. I was just too shaky to trust myself to walk and carry a box at the same time.

I am aching a lot now. I finally broke down and took some ibuprofen. I figure the pain isn't going to lessen unless I do the ibuprofen or the Lord intervenes.

Anyway, I'm still working on getting the canner up to temp and I have a horrific amount of kitchen cleaning to do. 

all good things...........

come to an end. I can't complain, except, about the amount of work facing me. It appears my ancient freezer has finally given up the ghost. I bought that freezer 44 years ago and it's been plugged in and doing its job except for about one year. I pulled some ice cream out last night and found some partially melted ice cream When I checked later, I found that my manual defrost freezer had NO ice left on the coils. Uh-oh.

The first problem is how do I pay for a replacement. I think I have that figured out though it's really gonna dictate a whole lot of belt tightening at least through the end of the year. I may not be able to buy anything to put in the replacement for months. Good thing I've been stocking up. It will be nerve wracking, though, to dig into my stash.......

Second thing to deal with is delivery and haul away of the old freezer. I learned to my horror that some companies that promise delivery bring the thing to the house and drop it on the curb. Now, what the heck would i do with that? It HAS to be put in place in the garage. And someone has to haul the old one away, preferably the guys who deliver the new one...........

Next is the challenge of finding something new. The old one is an upright and manual defrost. In an ideal world that is exactly what I would get again. Yes, defrosting it is a nuisance. But, I am pretty well convinced that two factors figure into its long life: 1) no automatic defrost pulling on the motor, and 2) no "energy star" crap on it. my belief is that simple is best when it comes to engineering/mechanics, simple is best. So far I've checked Sears, The Home Depot, Lowe's, and Amazon. I can find all sorts of manual defrost chest freezers, but, apparently, these days manual defrost uprights do not exist except if they are imported from and completely manufactured in China. Honestly, probably 90% of the parts/labor on a GE or Frigidaire probably are contributed by the Chinese. I do have my doubts with trying to deal with a Chinese company over a manufacturer's warranty. Besides, I already feel the Chinese are getting way too much of American money; I have no desire to contribute to the Make China Great Again fund, KWIM?

I cannot see myself, with a problematic back and at my age, trying to lift boxes or baskets of meat, etc., out of a chest freezer to defrost it. So, much as I don't want to, I think I'm going to have to do an automatic defrost upright and trust the Lord as to it's longevity. I do not believe I have enough faith to trust for a new freezer to last 44 years though.

I've been trying to plot the canning and dehydrating. My first mission has been to chop up into stew meat size pieces some very cheap roasts I have in the freezer. I pulled 4 of them a while ago totaling about 9 pounds. Three are in jars. I have to get the jars warmed up before I can add hot liquid to them. Hot "juice" in cold jars spells many broken jars...... Next, I know there is one smallish pork roast out there. And, there is some, not much, chicken. My freezer contents are sorted into categories: pork, beef, chicken, and fruits/veggies. I believe I am going to bring those boxes into the house and wrap them in blankets to help keep them from thawing. It's a sure thing it's cooler in the house than it will be in the garage today. I also plan to drop the temp somewhat on the a/c thermostat to aid in that. Bringing  the boxes in is also the surest way I know to make sure I don't miss something REALLY valuable, if I own something like that. I will run the canner full which should be about 18 jars at a time. I do have a smallish turkey out there, but I'm thinking I should do that last--it's probably the biggest thing out there and that alone should help to keep it frozen longer. 

I have decided the best course for me is to keep the canner and the dehydrator for as long as there is anything fit to can/dehydrate. Worst comes to worst, I will see what is in the fridge that I can sacrifice in order to preserve something from the freezer. 

I'm trying to maximize my trips in and out and minimize how much standing/walking I have to do. But, my back is already making loud protests. Well, I will do the best I can and the Lord will have to take care of the rest. Now, y next (last, I think) beef roast should be thawed enough that I can cut it up. ray for me. Today, surely, I'll be quoting to myself "they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like the eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint......."

 

Yam Tetris

I got my hands on some more yams and, since they are one of my favorite vegetables, decided to can 'em up for later use. As hot as it's been around here, it doesn't take 'em long to sprout, so canning will preserve them. 

Last time I did yams, I followed the suggestion to blanche them to help remove the peelings easily. The recipe I followed said to blanche them for 5 minutes. I checked them at 5 minutes and saw no evidence of the peels splitting or loosening. So, I let 'em go another minute and still saw no splitting or loosening. However, I didn't want to can sweet potato mush--I wanted sweet potato chunks. So, at 6 minutes I pulled them out and put them in cold water to stop the cooking. When I went to peel them, I was very disappointed to find I still had to use a knife to get the job done.  

With that experience under my belt, I decided just to use my peeler and peel them myself, raw, dispensing with the whole blanching process. They were easier to peel than I remembered, but I am a mess with a peeler--skins flying off in all directions. That meant I really needed to stand at the sink to do the peeling. Then the peels went into the compost bin.

What I should have done is peel one, plop it into a bowl full of water and then peel another. Then I could have sat down, and chopped them all at once. Unfortunately, I chopped each one as I peeled them. So, I ended up spending quite a long time standing on concrete floors (covered in linoleum). Today my back is screaming and my ankles are kinda unfriendly as well. 

However, I avoided what I most feared--an unusable right wrist. I was afraid all that work with the peeler, followed with the knife to chop them up, would cause my formerly broken and oh-so-sensitive wrist to be extremely painful. So, I cut the yams into larger chunks than last time. The result of that was that I ended up "playing tetris" with the cubes of yam, trying to maximize the space in the jars. I don't think I did a very good job of that as I ended up using 4 more jars than I'd planned for. 

In any case, I have 14 jars of yams on my counter. One didn't seal so I'll have some yams for lunch. I'm just grateful to have yams I could save and eat a year or more from now. Quick. My kind of fast food.

I think I may decide to can some vegetable soup sometime in the next couple of days. I have a cheater recipe that ought to be quick and easy but very nutritious.

Yum........

Most of the time, being here by myself, I don't do "meals". I eat, but maybe just a bowl of macaroni and cheese, or a quesadilla, or a burrito, or an entree or soup I froze previously. It just doesn't seem worth the effort to do much more than that. Yesterday, though, I got inspired or maybe it was just that some of the vitamins I take kicked in. I made a big pot of pork, sauerkraut, and dumplings. I ate two helpings and again, as a late night snack, I had another small bowl. And, I now have 6 servings in the freezer. 

I used a different kind of sauerkraut. I've always just used canned sauerkraut. But, when I tried to buy some of that, Kroger's substituted some fermented sauerkraut, It was packaged in a sealed plastic bag. It was really salty compared to what I usually have. But I kept diluting the "juice" (brine) and adding some brown sugar 'til it had that sweet 'n' sour taste that is a part of my Pennsylvania Dutch heritage. It was particularly delicious, spiced up with some caraway seeds. I was fortunate enough to have 2 very meaty country ribs in the freezer which cooked up really nicely and added a lot to the flavors in the pot. 

At first I couldn't figure out why "fermented" on the bag was so important. Then I remembered that I'd canned some sauerkraut which was really just chopped cabbage, a very mild brine, and then into glass jars and into the canner. Everything was boiled for a while and then it was shelf stable. What I had yesterday was actually salted down, the juice extracted, and then the concoction left out, unsealed, at room temperature to "ferment". In other words the micro-organisms in the bagged sauerkraut were not subjected to heat. And, heat actually kills those gut friendly micro organisms.