Easy - Canned Food?

Have you ever received a Christmas basket of homemade preserved foods like peaches, pears, plums, apricots, canned tomatoes, pickles or fresh homemade jams and jellies? Have you wondered if you can make them too? You can and I will explain how.
You will need to be prepared to take a whole day to go through the complete canning process. You should prepare ahead of time by going to the hardware store or into a hardware department of a big box store and buying a large canning pot as well as canning jars, canning lids, canning seals for the lids. It is also a very good idea to pick these items up at the end of the summer when canning season ends for next year as the prices are reduced and you can get them much cheaper. The initial cost is greater but the canning pot and jars are reusable year after year so after that it's relatively a lot cheaper to can your food. I like to buy extra seals as I like to replace them each year.
A pressure canning pot is used for canning meats and vegetables. The pressure canning pot comes with an instruction booklet most times which will explain how to use the pot and will have time tables to help you process the meats and vegetables properly. I usually use a regular canning pot to can fruits, jams and jellies. You should also get some long tongs to help you grab your jars out of the canning pot when it's hot after the processing time is done. I also like to use a good quality pair of oven mitts so that I don't get scalded while lifting the jars out of the canning pot when they're finished processing. A wide mouth funnel is also a good item to buy when canning fruit as it will fit into the wide mouth jars and your fruit will go into the jars easier. I also like to put a thick towel down on my counter tops or on my table to put the hot jars that I take out of the canning jars. It picks up any mess from the jars and helps them not to burst from a cool counter top or table.
After the jars are placed on the towel on the counter top they will start to cool down and you will hear some pops when the seals are sealed to the jar. The seal of the lid will also pull in so then you know that the jars are properly sealed. When the jars are cool I like to wipe the jars off if they are sticky and then label the jars with what I put in them and the date so I use the old jars up first.
You can find many recipes for canning on the web or recipe books. I also get recipes for canning or making jams, jellies, etc from the sure-gel, certo, etc that you buy to make the jam. There are many recipes, videos, etc to help you in your canning foods.
You can purchase your produce at the store, roadside fruit and vegetable stands or from your own gardens. Your fruit, vegetables and meats will be your main costs after the initial cost of purchasing the pot, jars, lids and seals next year. What a great savings in the cost of feeding your families.
I find that I feel a great satisfaction after I see the table full of jars of preserves that I just put down. You feel a great sense of accomplishment and you know that you have helped your family by saving money on commercial products. When you give a gift of fresh homemade jams or jellies I've always had such a positive response from the receiver. They usually ask for more.

Resource Box or Author Bio Information:
Jeannette McQueen-Nobbs or Queenie1 has written some articles and was published. She has also written an ebook.
Her blogs are:
http://petsweecare.blogspot.com; http://ancestrynme.blogspot.com; http://queenie1-wisdomthoughts.blogspot.com; http://kitchenfun-queenie1.blogspot.com; http://health4me-queenie.blogspot.com

Fun Kool-Aid Jelly

By Jeannette McQueen-Nobbs

This fall I decided that I would make my husband some beet grape jelly for his toast. Years ago when I was a young mother living in Southern Alberta, Canada a woman from my church taught me to save the water from cooking my beets. She told me to strain the beet water from the roots and pour the beet water through cheesecloth to get the impurities out. I stored the beet water in an container in the refridgerator until I was ready to use it.

I learned that when I cut the beet tops off that I could use the tops like spinach by boiling them and eating the beet tops with butter and salt just like spinach.

The beet roots were cooked and eaten hot with butter and salt or pickled. The beet is a wonderful vegetable as you can use all of it and there's no waste.

Beet Grape Jelly

1 package grape Kool-Aid, no sugar added
1 package pectin (Certo, Sure-Jell, etc.)
1 packet of unflavoured gelatin (Knox, etc.)
3 cups granulated sugar
3 cups water

1. Mix water with Pectin, Kool-Aid, and unflavoured gelatin together in a pot.
2. Bring to a boil and then stir constantly.
3. Stir in sugar.
4. Stir and bring to a full rolling boil.
5. Boil 1 min.
6. Remove from the heat.
7. Quickly skim off the foam with a large metal spoon.
8. Pour into jelly canning jars and seal.

I decided to try the same recipe for regular Kool-Aid jelly in different flavours.

I did Kool-Aid jelly using different flavours of Kool-Aid.

I made:

Orange/Carrot Jelly-Orange Kool-Aid with a carrot juice drink instead of water.
Raspberry Jelly-Raspberry Kool-Aid and raspberry drink instead of water.
Lime Jelly-Magic Kool-Aid and lime aid drink instead of water.

The beet grape flavour jelly people said tasted like regular grape jelly. I gave away 6 jars of different flavours of jelly that I made and still had 60 small canning jars of jelly left. Everyone I gave the jelly to finished them in one week. My husband finished his jar in a few days. I knew then that I had some good jellies as each person loved the different flavours.

Check out Jeannette McQueen-Nobbs at one of her blogs http://kitchenfun-queenie1.blogspot.com Other links to her other blogs are on her blog as well.