By: Amanda Hawkesworth 7 December 2020
Why I Started Canning
My husband as in the Army, and deployed in 2015 for a year. Korea is 13 hours ahead, so coordinating phone calls was a challenge. We didn't have kids yet, we had two dogs and I was still early in my teaching career. There was a lot of time I had to distract myself from the fact that I was alone. During that time, I kept myself so insanely busy to try and drown out the loneliness. One of the things I really took to was canning.
I had started gardening when Bruce and I first got together. I wasn't very good, I was still learning about what types of veggies grew in our environment, when to plant, why we don't plant them too close, and what the changes in leaf colors mean (I still am not very good at this, but I am definitely better!). When he left, I had two raised garden boxes and I planted a ton of tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers!
How I Learned To Can
A good friend and teaching assistant at my school brought me with her to a canning class at her church. Her friend was a mom of 4 at the time, with a little one on the way. Her gardens were immaculate, and they canned everything they grew. She had the biggest stockpile of tomato sauce, salsa, canned vegetables, jams, jellies.....you name it, it was in her pantry. I was in awe. I wanted that for myself! I could use all the veggies in my garden to can a sauce, a salsa or pickles....I was ecstatic. The classes were so much fun, we learned a LOT and I have never been more thankful to learn how to can.
At this class, I learned to can using the water bath method. For more information on how to can and what you can safely can using the water bath method, please follow the link to my Canning Pinterest board.
My First Time Using the Water Bath Method
After the classes, I felt confident I could can my own items. I had just arrived back home from a trip to visit my family in Upstate New York. My grandparents have a raspberry patch, and my mom and I went to town picking those delicious berries. I gathered the goods from my garden and got to work. Raspberry jam, dill pickles, and salsa and tomato sauce using the tomatoes cucumbers and peppers I grew. Overall, everything came out decent for my first time doing it. I learned a lot about making each item, budgeting my time, and finding recipes I liked (the pickles were a dill recipe, but came out far sweeter than I prefer. The jam and salsa was delicious. The tomato sauce came out more as a simmer sauce than a hearty marinara like I wanted. All-in-all, I deemed it a success for my first time.
Getting Back into the Canning Game
I took a long hiatus from canning. Not on purpose, but life seemed to have gotten the best of me. When my husband returned from deployment in 2016, we had one night together before we started our journey moving to Texas. When we got settled into base housing in Texas, I found out I was pregnant, and so began a long journey of minor pregnancy complications and the stress of attending a military hospital. Then, of course, there was no time other than sleep and feeding a newborn. Shortly after MJ was born, we transitioned back into civilian life over the course of about six months. We finally settled in our current home in Florida.
Since being in Florida, I have grown accustomed to the fabulous local farmers markets. I shop there whenever I can, and have some favorites I like to attend. The one I go to the most is the Pavilion Farmer's Market in Port Orange. They are open every Saturday from 9-1 (some are there are 8am, some stay until 2pm!) and have amazing vendors. There is a local beekeeper that sells varieties of honey, a local farmer that sells products made with goats milk (this is the ONLY place I buy soap for our family, check them out at La Petite Ferme. I highly recommend the Blackberry Vanilla bar soap!), and of course, the massive variety of fruits and vegetables.
I hadn't been to the market in a while, so I traveled out to Port Orange on Saturday (12/5) with my mother-in-law. Boy, oh BOY did I hit the jackpot. I found Carolina Reaper Pepper Flakes for my husband as a stocking stuffer (Brucey LOVES spicy pepper anything, he's going to love this!). I found a little notebook with a wood cover, that has The Nightmare Before Christmas characters wood-burned into it (MJ loves his Jack Skellington, and we've been promoting writing and drawing to build his fine-motor skills), and of course, what you've all been waiting for, the veggies.
I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw the price tags. They had sweet potatoes 4/$1. I refrained from buying the whole basket. They had green bell peppers 5/$1, and red/yellow/orange bell peppers 3/$1. Again, I had to have some self control here. We moved on to the next section where I found banana peppers and cowhorn peppers $2 for a basket, each basket containing about 6-8 peppers. Jalapeno peppers were $1 per basket, and there had to be 10 in each basket. My last steal was a bundle of 3 beets for $2. Here is my final haul, a grand total of $15
Benefits of Canning
If you've never canned before, I'm sure you are asking yourself why in the world people go through all that trouble. There are plenty of benefits!
- Financial: Canning is good for saving money, especially when you grow the vegetables/fruits yourself, or find them at the farmers market for wildly cheap prices like I did! All my families out there that have a tight or strict budget, canning is something to look into!
- Nutrition: canning food has many nutritional benefits. My favorite is that you know where the food came from! if you are growing your own or buying from a local farmer or market, you are controlling what chemicals (if any) are used on your food as they are being grown.
- Eco-Friendly: canning helps reduce your carbon footprint! Those mason jars can be used as long as possible. You MAY need to purchase new lids/seals (depending on your usage), but this is simple and will not lead to a major environmental impact.
- A Good Healthy Hobby: It's fun to do! You can make it a family adventure, a life-lesson on farm-to-table, use it to ease your anxiety....whatever makes you happy. Plus, you get the delicious benefit of a full pantry with this hobby! Canning helped me during a time when I was constantly alone. This helped as a good distraction, eased a lot of stress and anxiety and made me feel good about the food I was making and eating.
Planning to Can
After I got my all my goods at the farmer's market, I got to work. I needed a pickling solution that worked for the veggies I got. Pickling solutions can be as simple as equal parts vinegar and water, but some vegetables require specific levels and different seasonings, depending on the flavor you are searching for. I started doing immediate research on what worked for these types of peppers. I used the following posts as inspiration.
I made small tweaks here and there, but overall, these were the recipes I used!
Now came the fun part...cutting, cooking and prepping. There is a proper procedure that goes into water bath canning, and it MUST be followed. Skipping steps could lead to major issues, such as breaking your mason jars or contracting botulism. Waterbath Canning for Success and Safety is a great place for any newbie to check out before diving in.
Procedure
I started the process by putting all the metal pieces of my mason jars into a pot and covered them with water. I placed it on a burner and brought it to a boil. Once it is boiling, turned it off, but leave the the lids in there. This process sterilizes them to prevent any issues with sealing.
Next, I got my water bath ready. I have an water bath kit that I bought when I first started. This works AMAZING, and you can fit a ton of jars inside. However, this kit is NOT compatible with a glass stove top. I just my extra large stock pot I got for making batches of pasta sauce. I fill with hot water to make the water boil quicker, and as I wait for it to boil, I place my mason jars inside. This is also part of the sterilizing process. Plus, the jars MUST be hot when you fill them or you run the risk of having them crack.
While everything is being sterilized, I started the pickling solution. As the solution was coming to a boil, I would cut the veggies and have them ready to be stuffed into the jars. I canned the veggies in this order:
1. Beets
2. Jalapeno Peppers
3. Banana and Cowhorn Peppers
They each required slightly different solutions. With some strict multi-tasking, this was much more manageable than it sounds!
When the stock pot was about to come to a boil, I took the jars out. I packed them full of the veggies and ladled the pickling solution into the jar using a canning funnel. Next, I removed the canning funnel and used a microfiber cloth to wipe off the rims of the jars. (Another handy use for microfiber cloths! If you haven't seen my post about the cloths, click here now!) Then, using a handy little canning magnet ("lid lifter"), I gently took the lids out of the hot water and placed them on the mason jars, and screwed them on tightly. Using the canning tongs, I placed them in the hot water and let them sit in their hot water bath for about 12 minutes.
Afterwards, I used the tongs to gently take them out, and placed the on a folded dish towel on the counter to cool.
Look At All Those Veggies
This is the final result! I was able to get 1 jar of pickled beets, 2 jars of jalapenos, 3 jars of banana peppers, 1 jar of cowhorn peppers, 1 jar of what I am calling "pepper medley" (the amount of pepper rings that wouldn't make a full jar, but combined made a nice full jar!). I used quart sized jars (32 0z). The store was out of the 16 oz jars I wanted, but these work just fine.
After I was done canning, I took the rest of the veggies and prepped them for storage. The sweet potatoes were placed in the potato/onion basket in the pantry. A few of the banana peppers were placed, whole, in the fridge to be stuffed as a dinner this week. The bell peppers were sliced or diced and placed into vacuum sealing bags. This helps me avoid food waste that I fall victim to every month. If I cut them and seal them, they last in the freezer until I need them. It helps put an end to that vicious cycle of needing a bell pepper and finding it moldy in your vegetable drawer (who can relate to that?!). I prepped 1 pepper per bag (for easy measuring) and combined 1 of each red/yellow/orange pepper in a few bags for my Chicken Cacciatore recipe. They go straight into a basket in the deep freezer for easy finding!
It can definitely be a time-consuming job, but I hope I was able to show you the benefits of canning and that it can be easily squeezed into your busy schedule! There are so many benefits to it, but most of all I love being able to teach my little one life skills, and I think this was a very fitting lesson for him!
By: Amanda Hawkesworth 7 December 2020
