Adventures in Canning

Every summer from the time I was two years old to well after college, I would go visit my grandparents in Mississippi. As a young girl and teenager I would stay anywhere from a couple of weeks to a couple of months. I loved going to visit because we always had so much fun at Nanny and Pawpaw's. It also helped that my aunt and uncle and cousins lived right next door. Summers in Mississippi, involved good food, snow cones, boat rides, island exploring and helping in the garden and kitchen.

This is a picture of my Nanny and Pawpaw sitting on their front porch. Taken for their 50th anniversary.

Now if I am honest that last part was not my favorite thing to engage in. Working in the garden meant getting up early picking the veggies {Tomatoes, corn, green beans, peas, squash, zucchini, etc} and then helping process and store the food. I hated this process. Mostly because as a young girl, I personally felt it was my duty to sleep in til at least 10 am, and my Pawpaw felt it was his duty to make sure this didn't happen {especially on the days we had to help in the garden}. I would also say he was not polite in his delivery of getting me up. Now if you knew my Pawpaw you would know he took great delight in teasing and having fun, and I personally feel it was his greatest pleasure to wake me up in the most ungodly of ways. His preferred method was to come into the room turn on the lights and open the blinds, now some may say oh that's not bad, I'm not finished. While he was turning on the lights and opening the blinds, he would sing at the top of his lungs "This is the day." For those not familiar with this particular tune, this is the christian equivalent to "The ants go marching in" or at least I think it is.

Sometimes this was all it took, but there were days I was feeling particularly stubborn and wasn't going to let him win so easily. On those occasions he decided to sit on the bed beside me and quote various verses from Proverbs. His main go to verses were: 1) "A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, and poverty will come upon you like a robber, and want like an armed man." Proverbs 6: 10-11. That one I didn't mind too much, however the next one was a little insulting if you ask me. 2) "Go to the ant, you sluggard; observe its ways and be wise!" Proverbs 6: 6. {we can clearly see he liked Proverb 6}. So what did he mean by quoting the second verse, it was a biblical way of saying I was lazy and an ant was more productive than me. Like I said insulting, he clearly didn't understand that I thought it was my personal duty to sleep in.

In all seriousness, I didn't appreciate what my grandparents were trying to teach me and my sister when we worked in the garden. Sometimes we have to work hard in the moment to enjoy a greater reward later. At the time, I hated canning beans, and putting up corn and peas, but man oh man did I love them when we had them to enjoy throughout the year. You can't buy what growing your own food and putting it up yourself tastes like. It is soooo much better than anything you can get in the grocery store. I also think it is an amazing skill to have to fall back on if you need it. So this summer, I introduced to Abbie the fine art and labor of canning beans.

This idea came to me, mainly because of Covid-19. Abbie had been complaining about being bored and having nothing to do and I started to think maybe we should do some canning. Trust me on this, nothing will get your child a better attitude then making them string and snap a bushel of green beans. So to put my plan in motion, I asked my mom if she still had her old canner {she did and she gave it to me}. If you are thinking about doing this you can find several different canning pots on Amazon. They have several different sizes and it really just depends on how much you are wanting to do and what you are wanting to do. She also had her old manual and old canning cookbook that she brought with it. {super helpful with determining pressure for each type of veggie you can.} Next, I had to find a local farm where I could get green beans. We found a local farm that had its own stand, just a couple miles from where we live. We called a head and the farm sent our order to the stand. Easy peasy. Because I wasn't doing a whole lot of canning I bought my mason jars at Wal-Mart and Target. Typically I like quart but they were out so I used pints, others may be canning during quarantine I’d guess. I was fine with it because next year I want to try canning tomatoes and pints are great for that and I will buy quarts for other items.

So Abbie and I start stringing and snapping beans and Abbie was all for it, for about an hour, but then she started to get tired and gave up.

I teased that this was the easier task, and explained the hard part is being in the garden and picking them. After we got them snapped, we took them to the kitchen, cleaned them and started packing them into the jars {Ellie even got in on the action}.

I used my moms books as well as the internet to make sure I was doing things correctly. That is something that is so helpful, Google. Canning can seem complicated but it really isn't and if you have a question about something there are so many good sites out there that makes it easy to clarify what you need to do. We ended up putting up 42 pints of green beans. Almost a jar a week for a whole year!

So this is the process I used to can my beans: Again I am combining the information from my mom's books and the internet.

Step 1: String and snap you beans. The length you want your beans is about 1 1/2 inches.

Step 2: Wash you beans. I filled up my sink half way with water and then dumped my snapped beans in to rinse them and get the dirt off.

Step 3: you want to bring water to boil either in a large pot or kettle. This is to pour over the beans after you fill the jars. At the same time you want a small pot of boiling water to put the lids in.

Step 4: This can be done prior to step one but should be done before you fill your jars. You want to sanitize your jars.

Step 5: Fill the jar with beans making sure to stuff them tight. I did this by filling it half way, tapping the jar on the counter and then stuffing the rest of the way, up to the neck of the jar.

Step 6: Put about a teaspoon of salt on top. You could do it at the bottom before filling but I liked seeing the salt dissolve when I added the boiling water.

Step 7: Fill the jars up with the boiling water to within an a half an inch of the rim and then top with the lid and ring and screw on tight.

Step 8: fill you canner with two quarts of water and begin heating to a boil. Place jars inside the canner.

My canner held seven pint jars, so I worked in batches of 7.

Step 9: cover pot with lid and set the pressure fob to 10 lbs.

Step 10: one your pressure fob starts jingling, monitor and maintain pressure for 20 minutes.

Step 11: after 20 minutes. Cut the heat and remove fob to let the pressure release. Set jars on counter to cool overnight.

So while my first batch was in the canner I worked on the next batch so it would be ready as soon as the previous was finished.

We had six jars remaining and I decided to be adventurous and try something new. I googled canning recipes for pickles. I wanted to try my hand at dill and bread and butter. The website I used is a blog called Practical Self Reliance. This blog has all kinds of recipes for canning a variety of veggies and sauces. It also includes helpful tips for canning for those who are interested in what is all about. It was this site that I found my instructions for dill pickles and bread and butter pickles. Canning pickles was super easy and not all that time consuming. I put up 3 cans of dill and 2 of the bread and butter. I have to wait two weeks to see if they are any good, but it was fun to try something new. I hope this sparks interest in those who have wanted to do it but wasn't sure how.