A Hard Day's Work

Yesterday...

Ten half pints of freezer jam....

plus...

Ten pints of chicken...

plus 39 can of flour, rice, sugar, wheat and milk...

equals one exhausted woman!

Now I just need to find a place to store it all....

Wow... this is Amazing!

So, Wednesday we finally learned how to pressure can meat! Our RS pres, graciously let us invade her kitchen on Wednesday and do a pressure canning session at her house while we had our weekly meeting! We did ground beef. I'm not going to post step by step instructions here, but this is the pressure canner we used, and all good pressure canners come with very detailed instructions. I will say how we prepped the meat... that's the only thing you might not get in the instructions... we precooked the ground beef (using fresh high quality meat, on sale of course!), drained the fat and put it in the bottles with some liquid. I used beef broth, and Tammy used a mixture of tomato juice and water. I think either one works equally well! If you would like to read more on how to do this before making a sizable investment in a pressure canner, google "pressure canning ground beef". You should be able to find lots of websites that explain how to do it. Next week we are going to try roast beef. It's going to be great. I've already told Eric I want one of this for Mother's Day! I found a place to put my meat collection - above the fridge! Thanks Jill for teaching us how to do this - it was a blast!

Canning Under Pressure

Last night (after T's track meet) we had a Relief Society gathering to learn about a different approach to food storage. Since Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, I think (well HOPE) most Americans have realized the importance of keeping some kind of "food stash" for an emergency. Our Church has preached this concept for... well... forever! We've had it beaten into our heads, and we know it's a good idea and even more than that we believe it's a commandment, but knowing it and doing it are two different things. I have quite a bit of food storage, but a lot of it is food we don't really eat. I have tons of dried milk... and I hate dried milk and coming up with recipes that need milk, but don't taste like they have "dried" milk in them is a challenge! All the stuff we do eat, we've already eaten and I've had to replace, like the rice, sugar and flour. But the real challenge has been how do you store meat long term??? We have a second freezer and I'm working on stocking it with all kinds of chicken, pork and beef.... but what if... and this is a frightening thought.... but what if Phoenix had a long term power crisis and I lost all my perishable food? It's a very real possibility, especially with the extreme heat we experience in the summer. Well... last night I learned how to bottle (in mason jars) chicken, ground beef and beans. You can also do pork or roast beef, too. It's suprisingly simple and easy to do and doesn't heat up your kitchen like bottling peaches or tomatoes in the water bath canners (like our mothers did when we were kids)... I have some "not so fond" memories of these "canning" days as a kid! So, someday (after I have found a quality pressure cooker for a reasonable price (see photo) - hopefully ebay will come through for this....) I'll be able to bottle my own chicken and ground beef... last night we sampled some ground beef that had been bottled already and we heat it up in a skillet and it was GREAT! A gal at our get together has tried bottled chicken and she says it tastes BETTER than the canned chicken you can buy at Costco or Sam's Club... now top that!!!