OT: Information wanted on Canning/Freezing Fruits & Veggies

Hi, all! I've never canned or frozen fruits & veggies before, but I'd definitely like to give it a try. If anyone has any recipes, hints, tips, suggestions, etc for a total newbie, please help me out! Feel free to email me directly at [email protected] if you have recipes you'd like to send. Thanks so much!

check out www.sufficientself.com

 Subscribing because I'm interested too!

 Best way to freeze fruits and veggies is to use dry ice.

Break the dry ice up and put in the bottom of a cooler on a cookie sheet place your cleaned fruits or veggies and place this in the cooler over the dry ice.  Be careful when opening the cooler or getting your face to close to the cooler as breathing the gas is not a good idea.

How long do you keep the cookie sheet in the cooler? Then you just take the items off the cookie sheet & put them in baggies & stick them in the freezer? Also, where do you buy dry ice?

Thanks for all the info!

We do alot of canning. Veggies need to be pressure canned due to the low acid content. Pressure canners can be pretty expensive and the start up cost for canning can get spendy. I would suggest freezing at first. Then, you can gather canning jars and canners at garage sales and clearence sales. Good luck.

I don't want to discourage you at all. My mom always canned our food and it was a natural progression for me to do it. But, I can imagine starting from scratch can be pretty confusing and overwhelming. I'd go to the library and check out some canning books and read up on it.

Thanks for the info, BeccaM76! I've already requested some books from my library. I'm hoping I'll be able to get one of my gardening friends to show me the ropes. Yes, it does look like the startup costs are quite a bit. I've been looking on Craigslist for canning jars, but people are selling them for just about as much on there as what they're going for at Mendards. I've read that you have to purchase new lids each year. Is that correct? Thanks so much for your input!

I've been canning for 45 years--as a matter of fact I did a bushel of tomatoes today and froze almost 2 bushels of corn (cut from the cob)--tomorrow I will do 50 pounds of Irish potatoes. I can for my son's family, my sister in law and a couple of elderly neighbors. If you are going to buy jars from garage sales or other places like that make sure you get regular mason jars--don't get a bunch of "mayonnaise" type jars--they are not recommended for pressure cooker canning---make sure you can see them in person and ALWAYS check the rims of the jars--wet your finger and run it around the rim of the jars--even a tiny tiny nick in the rim will cause the jar to not seal, also if you are buying "used" bands make sure you check them out for rust or if they are bent out of shape--both will give you problems and may cause your jars to not seal properly..Get a reputable canning book and read it from cover to cover. You can get information off the Internet but a lot of it is not reliable (water bath canning vegetables, sterilizing your jars in the oven for example.) Home canning can be very rewarding and it can save you money--plus things just taste better--you control if you want to use salt for example, there are also a lot of recipes for "special diet" canning. But I also have to say it can be very hard work--depending on what you can and how much you do. I will do between 700 and possibly 1000 jars but like I say, I don't just can for my DH and I--also what saves us the money is we have a VERY large garden plus fruit trees--you can get produce at farm markets but with the droughts and everything that's going on with the weather it's getting harder and harder to find farmers willing to sell their produce by the half or full bushel--they can make much more money selling things by the quart or in smaller amounts. I can veggies, fruit, sauces, soups,jams , and meat----it seems to be a dying art !

Check out ball.com . They have a lot of info on line.