The end of the garden season has been keeping me so busy with cleaning up the garden and yard, and preserving all the fresh food I can lay my hands on.
Absolutely love my Presto pressure canner and Nesco dehydrator. I have been canning nearly every day and running the Nesco every day. I have also been testing Linda's Pantry (225sage on YouTube) meal in a pouch/jar recipes on my husband.... they have been passing the taste test and he even requested that I prepare some meals for him for lunch at work. We have a small slow cooker (1 quart) that we have never used and will be ideal for preparing his lunches at work.
For the first time in all the years I have canned food I have pressure canned meat! The first test was a package of breakfast sausage links. I processed 14 links in a pint jar. The next day I opened the jar, they looked okay, completely cooked, but we didn't like the texture. Too soft and mushy. So I removed them from the jar, drained and patted them dry, then put them in the dehydrator for a while (about an hour +/-). Perfect! They dried out just enough to restore the texture and the flavor.
I
have dehydrated tomatoes, corn, bell peppers, carrots, celery, green
onions, mushrooms, potatoes (not crazy about the potatoes), and
zuchinni. And have purchased freeze-dried chicken and peas, and dried
eggs in #10 cans from Honeyville Farms. Excellent!
I also processed some leftover roast chicken. There was enough white meat to fill a pint jar. It processed beautifully!
Along with these two little jars, I processed 4 1/2 pounds of chuck roast cut into large cubes and filled 3 pint jars and one 1 1/2 pint jar. I added a bit of S&P, and a few herbs which I usually add to my roasts, and added just a bit of boiling water to each jar. Processed all six jars for 90 minutes at 11 lbs pressure (for my altitude) and let cool for 24 hours afterwards.
Now I am watching the store flyers for sales on meat so I can stock up.
My cupboard is also holding jars of ground beef, stewed tomatoes, spaghetti sauce with meat, green tomato mincemeat and sliced peaches.
In addition to all this, I thought I would test out the mylar bags and oxygen packets for the food in my pantry. When I can find things at a good price I stock up, just like the rest of you probably do. Problem is some items tend to get stale before I have a chance to use them, especially boxed cereal.
So I tested the mylar/oxygen packet on a large box of Cheerios. It took two 1-gallon mylar bags to hold one large box of Cheerios. No problem. I separated the box into two 12-ounce bags, inserted the packet and sealed with the Food Saver. Then I watched and waited expecting to see the bags constrict, but it didn't happen..... not at first. Next day the oxygen packets had obviously done their job and I had two nicely shaped, vacuum sealed packages. Love it.
This is what I have been doing..... I'd love to know what you have been busy doing now that the season is nearly over and how you are preparing for the next season. :)
Happy Preserving!
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