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Part of the reason I made my escape up North was to lower my expenses. If I paid the regular grocery store prices up here, however, I’d be right back at square one. To offset this, I indulge in one of my favorite hobbies, canning.
Over the past couple of days I’ve been doing a lot of canning – I went grocery shopping and found amazing sales for the upcoming Thanksgiving weekend.
Two somewhat rainy days in a row have given me a break from the outdoor duties so I’ve been able to do lots of food prep.
Thus far, I’ve canned organic carrots, organic green beans, and jars of mixed beans and carrots. I’ve made a beef stew from some reduced-priced meat and vegetables as well.
Because ham and turkey were on deep discount, I purchased a large 10 pound ham and two 20 pound turkeys. I cooked the ham for a weekday dinner and canned half of the leftovers in a honey mustard syrup, and the other half just plain. I’ll cook one turkey this weekend for Thanksgiving and portion out the leftovers into more jars – broth, soup and just plain yummy turkey.
If you don’t have a pressure canner I strongly encourage you to invest in one. When you can your food instead of freezing it, you aren’t reliant on the power grid – if the electricity goes out you don’t have to worry about a deep freezer full of meat going bad. What’s more, it’s very simple to open a jar and heat up the contents on the woodstove or heat source – far simpler than trying to cook something raw from frozen in that type of situation.
The bounty of the past few days:
Right on! You may find that liter jars are too much if there are just two of you. I’ve taken to using 500 ml and 250 ml jars as there are just 2 of us here. The only thing I do in liter jars are pickles, jams/preserves and dry goods.
Hi, Anne! Sorry I’m so late replying. I use a lot of the smaller jars myself. With the meat, I like to make broth along with it so I always use the bigger jars. I pack the meat in with filtered water or a broth and then when it’s time to serve it, I reserve the broth for another use, like cooking rice or the base for a soup. I stumbled upon some 2 liter jars the other day and they are fantastic for dry goods – I wish I’d bought another case of them! I can’t imagine canning in them though!