Can It!

As part of my continuing efforts to live a frugal lifestyle and to be an all-around homemaking stud, I am learning how to can food.  My teacher in this endeavor is my mother-in-law, Peg.  She has been canning since about 1966, so I figure she is qualified to be my instructor.

Me and Peg in the kitchen, where my first canning lesson took place.

My first lesson in canning was green beans.  The beans came from my father-in-law Jim's garden, which you need to know is a veritable cornucopia of vegetable goodness.  Jim can grow just about any edible plant in his garden, and he does it with style.

The bean patch in Jim's garden.

It was my job to pick and snap the beans.  I had help picking from my kids and from my cat Ginger, who did a good job polishing my ankles as I was bent over the bean bushes.  I also had some help snapping the beans from Jim and from Peter, who apparently had not snapped beans since he was about seven years old and couldn't remember how to do it at first.

After the beans were all harvested and snapped, the first step was to gather jars.  Jim and Peg can every year, so finding jars at their house was no problem.

Next, Peg filled the empty jars with beans and I added a little salt to each one.  We then poured boiling water into each jar, leaving some room at the top.  I stuck a knife down around the edges of each jar to get the air bubbles out, and then I screwed lids on to all the jars.  Pretty simple, really.

I'm pouring boiling water from a tea kettle.  We're very proper around here.

While we were filling the jars, we had some water heating up inside Peg's pressure canner.  This particular canner dates from the early 70's and will never break.  We did have an issue with the pressure gauge, but Peg bought a replacement one and now the canner is good for another 30 years or so.

So once all our jars had lids on them, we placed them into the canner.  We could fit 16 pint jars into the canner at once.  Then we clamped the lid onto the canner and waited for the pressure to build up inside.  When that happens, a little button pops up on the top of the canner.  Then you wait for about seven or eight minutes to let air escape through a hole in the lid before putting the pressure regulator on it.  Then you watch the pressure gauge.

The new pressure gauge, reading at 10 lbs. of pressure.

The level of pressure you want to reach in the canner depends on what you're canning.  For vegetables it was 10 lbs. of pressure, so we waited as the pressure slowly climbed up to 10.  Once it reached 10, we had to reduce the temperature on the stove in order to keep it right at 10 for twenty minutes.

After twenty minutes was up, we removed the canner from the stove and waited for the pressure to dissipate.  When that happens, the little button on the top falls back down, and you know it's safe to open the lid.  We used a jar grabber tool to pick up the hot jars of beans, now cooked and sterilized.  We set them on the counter to cool, and as they cooled down you could hear the lids snapping, which meant that they had sealed properly.

That's the jar grabber tool.  I don't know what it's real name is.

And there you have it!  Canning is a much simpler process than I had thought it would be.  Our plan is to can peaches next, and possibly applesauce in the fall.  Needless to say, I am totally excited about canning and I plan to make it a regular part of my life.

We canned 41 pints of green beans!