Beekeeping is on my list. I met a fellow last summer that started showing me around the art of beekeeping. I hope his bees made it through this brutal winter. I'm looking forward to the next lessons. He even offered to help me get set up with some of his surplus equipment when I feel I'm ready. I love fresh, raw honey.
This is awesome to see. Me and my lady just got a 16 quart Presto pressure cooker/canner to start canning our from scratch spaghetti sauce (we even mix our own sausage, literally all of it is from fresh organic ingredients). We're working on firing up a good garden this year. It will be our second summer in the house we bought so we are much more prepared this year. Thanks for the thread, I may bounce some ideas off you when the time comes if you don't mind.
Just found this thread. I used to can everything I could get my hands on but it is a time factor now. We have to purchase all our fruit as there aren't any orchards around here. Last year I canned tomatoes, plums, cherries and fish. Made two batches of marmalade in January. The plums and tomatoes go fast. Blackberries and blueberries I freeze and then make jam when I have time. My SIL canned his smoked fish and that worked out well. I thought it would dry out too much but it didn't. Has anyone canned peas in the shell? I froze quite a lot but found they were slimy after I cooked them for a meal.
Mushrooms would need a pressure canner I think as there isn't a high acid content in them unless you were going to pickle them ?
Yes, I am going to pickle them. This year is my pickle year. My chef friend does a lot with various forms of canning and now I am hooked.
you really cant beat canned or frozen food you do yourself. We can a lot of stuff from our garden and I wouldnt eat the same without it. Its a lot of work but well worth it.
Variety is one of the things we like most about canning. Regular Ketchup when eating a burger out is such a let down. Probably why we don't do it that often. Same deal with pickles.
Homemade Ketchup sounds really good! Never had the opportunity to sample ,,,BUT Woodwidow said seeing I asked so nicely maybe this summer She will make some!!!
I don't know whether to like this post or not. It would be an adventure to try making ketchup and that is what this forum has been inspiring me to do. Try new things.
AuntJoe made ham gravy for Easter dinner. I canned the leftover and got 2 pints for later use. I thought about just freezing it because there was so little but once you've lost a lot of frozen food to an extended power outage, you like to use other options.
