Ball Complete Book of Canning and Home Preserving Giveaway!

 

Well, have things started to slow down for you since Christmas? Yeah, me neither. We had a great Christmas, and I hope y'all did too.  I have been really busy since Christmas and I have a list of things to do that is mile long. I am not really sure where to start when trying to tackle my to-do list. However, I knew when I received this as a Christmas present, that I had to do a giveaway. My little sister got me this and I just knew that one of my readers needed to have a copy too!

You all know my love of all things canning. I have been known to take free fruits and vegetables from people just so I can find a recipe to can them and put them up for the year. I know that many of you share my love for canning, so this is my gift to you and a great way to start out the New Year! I can't wait to see who the lucky winner will be!

Make sure to share this so all your friends and family can get entered in the drawing!

The drawing starts tonight at midnight and goes until midnight on January 8th!

Good luck, and happy canning this New Year!

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Little House's Freezer and Canning Inventory

 

Do you keep an inventory of your freezer and pantry? I decided today to do just that today. I am going to try and keep a list of all that we have available to make it easier to meal plan. I am not sure how many of you will find this interesting, but here ya go!

FREEZER INVENTORY:

Venison Burger - 69 one pound packages

Venison Steak - 4 one pound packages

Venison Roast - 4 roast


Venison Back Loins - 2

Corn from our garden - 33 quart bags

Green Peppers - 9 half quart bags

Strawberries from our garden - 1.5 gallon bags full

Multicolored peppers - 2 half quart bags


HOME CANNING INVENTORY:

Canned venison - 17 quarts

Canned Tomatoes - 43 quarts

Applesauce - 7 quarts, 6 pints

Apple Jelly - 4 jelly jars

Blackberry Jam - 3 pints, 3 jelly jars

Dill Pickles - 5 quarts, 3 pints

Pears - 9 quarts, 3 pints

Squash relish - 5 pints

Apple pie filling - 4 quarts

Green beans - 14 pints

Kidney beans - 10 pints

Pinto beans - 6 pints

Navy beans - 1 pint

Chicken broth - 4 quarts, 1 pint

Potatoes - 4 quarts

Spaghetti sauce - 16 quarts, 1 pint

Salsa - 6 quarts, 5 pints

Pizza Sauce - 7 pints

Bread and butter pickles - 3 quarts

Peach sauce - 3 quarts

Strawberry jam - 1 jelly jar

Peach jam - 1 pint

Ketchup - 9 quarts, 1 pint

This is not all the food we have in our freezer. We also have stuff like butter, leftovers, and frozen fruit we bought from the grocery store. I also have a pantry with pasta, flour, and etc. in it that I still need to inventory. What's on this list was put away from our farm or from a local farmer here in our town, except the pint of peach jam, which came from a friend, and the kidney, pinto, and navy beans that were dried beans bought from the store and canned here.

Living my dream right here on this farm!

~Jenn

 

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How To Can Venison and How To Use It



 

Have you ever pressure canned venison?

We have been canning venison for quite a few years now. I believe it's worth your time to learn how to do it. We love to use it for vegetable soup, BBQ sandwiches, and venison and noodles. It makes the meat really tender. Basically, anything you would use pulled pork or shredded beef for, you can replace with canned venison.

Here is how you do it:

1. Well first you need a deer and deer meat.

2. Cut your deer meat up into cubes. We cut the neck, front shoulders, and hind quarters up into 1-2 inch cubes.

 

3. Stuff canning jars with raw meat and use a wooden spoon to help pack it down into jars. Use as much meat as you can stuff in there to make it full.

 

 

 



 

4. Put 2 tsp of canning salt in jars. Do not add water or liquid to your jars. Put canning lid and ring on after wiping rim of jar to make sure it's cleaned off. This assures that the lid will seal correctly.
 

 

 

5. Put 2-3 inches of water in your pressure canner. Set jars in pressure canner and put lid on on your canner. Make sure you have a really good seal on your pressure canner lid. Bring pressure up to 15 pounds of pressure. Once it's up to pressure and it starts hissing and ticking, you time it for 90 minutes. After 90 minutes, let the pressure come down in your canner before removing jars. This can take up to an hour.

 

Please don't be afraid of a pressure canner. If used properly they are a really great tool for a homesteader to have in their kitchen.

 

Leave questions in comment section and share this post to let other people know that they can pressure can their venison!

 







 

 

 

 

 

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Homemade Ketchup

 

Do you have the same kind of obsession that I do when it comes to making things yourself instead of buying them? This past fall I tried my hand at homemade ketchup and it turned out great! My boys even like it and they are the hardest to sell on some of my homemade stuff. I thought I would take the time to share my recipe with you. I think you will be surprised at how easy it is to make homemade ketchup.

 

Here's what you will need:

 

2 quarts of canned tomatoes

3/4 cup of distilled vinegar

2/3 cup of sugar

1 teaspoon of onion powder

1/2 teaspoon of garlic powder

1 3/4 teaspoon of salt

1/4 teaspoon of celery salt

1/4 teaspoon of ground mustard

1/4 teaspoon of black pepper

1 whole clove

Empty quart jar and lid

Funnel

About 4 hours of time while it simmers on the stove. I suppose you could try to do it in the crockpot if you wanted to, but I have not done this to know how well it would work.

 



 

First, grab your canned tomatoes and all your ingredients.

 

I use a 4 quart sauce pan for making my homemade ketchup.

 



 

Dump 2 quarts of canned tomatoes in the sauce pan and add all ingredients on the list. Stir to mix all together. I do not remove the seeds from my canned tomatoes to make homemade ketchup. I don't see where it's really an issue to leave them in. I haven't noticed anything negative from leaving them in and you can't taste them when you eat the ketchup.

 



 

Simmer between low and medium for 3 hours.

 

Around the third hour of simmering, I take my immersion blender and blend it really well so there are no chunks left. Take your clove out before doing this. I have been known to forget taking mine out, but it gets blended with the rest and doesn't hurt anything. Simmer for another hour. As the ketchup cooks it will get thicker and become a darker red.

 

After 4 hours of cooking your ketchup should be reduced to about half of what it was originally.

 

 

Let the ketchup cool and put it into clean quart jar using your canning funnel.

 

There you have it! Homemade ketchup!

 

 

 

At this point, I just stick a lid on it and put it in the refrigerator. We use a spoon to get it out, and we use it just like you would store bought ketchup. I am sure I could make a bigger batch and can it to store on my pantry shelves but I haven't tried this yet.

 

I made this for the fourth time yesterday and every time I am excited with the fact that I just made my own homemade ketchup! I hope you enjoyed the homemade ketchup tutorial. Let me know if you make it and how it taste to you.

 

~Jenn

 



 

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Canning Pears

It's still raining as I sit here and type this morning. I am thinking I may need to start building an ark. I try not to complain too much about it because I just don't care for complainers.  I get to read enough whining and complaining from people on Facebook everyday. Do you ever wonder if they realize how much they whine and complain on there?

On to happier thoughts...

This is Evan's lunch from yesterday. As I was putting it together I realized that everything but the peanut butter is something I have made myself. I get some kind of sick satisfaction out of that. It's what I dreamed about when we moved to this farm. I wanted to learn the skills of our ancestors and have a big garden and do lots of canning.

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Making Applesauce

 

The weather has been something else around these parts lately with nonstop raining.  My motivation is lacking without the sunshine. Yesterday, I finally decided to put my big girl pants on and go pick up apples from my friend who has been offering them to me for weeks now. She has a couple trees in her yard and they are loaded with apples this year. I have never made applesauce before but it was on my list of things I wanted to put up for the winter so I decided it was now or never.  

 

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How to Can Tomatoes the Little House Way

Have you always wanted to can tomatoes but it seems overwhelming to you? I did this step by step post so you can see that it's really an easy process. So get those plants started inside and grow you some tomatoes!

 

First thing you're going to need is tomatoes. Did I really need to say that....;) I've found canning tomatoes here cost about $7-$12 for twenty pounds. Once you get them you can put them in the sink and wash all the dirt and nasty from them.

 



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