I cannot wrap my mind around canning 700 jars

Trust me, some of us do that ! We plan on how many jars of each food we think we will eat in a year. So, 52 weeks in a year, 365 days, that takes a lot of food.

As Linda Lou said, trust me, MANY of us do that. ;) Hit 4 yard sales last weekend and picked 6 doz. more jars. Already on the list here is Annie's Salsa, dilled beans, green beans, meatless chili, green tomato relish, stewed tomatoes (our fav), chutney, jellies and jams, qts. of crushed tomatoes, enough tomato juice to last the winter (didn't do enough last year as we kill off a quart every 2 days), vegetable soup, pickles, peppers, pears, peaches, dried apples, dried onions, and anything else we can think of. ;)

Like Shirley we love canning and preserving almost as much as we love gardening and we love eating even more.

Dave

I'm a bit frightened at the thought of where my budding penchant for canning might take me. I've already filled the cabinet space available, and haven't even started canning my own tomato products!

After going to Costco the other day and buying boxes of diced tomatoes, tomato sauce, and tomato paste, I may just start this year!

Goodness, where will I keep it all.

Which brings me to a question I've had bopping around in my head but keep forgetting to ask!

Does temperature affect home canned goods? My husband built a pantry for me in the garage (yeah, he's a keeper), but living in the California Central Valley, heat is a real problem. I mean, today it got to 105, and I did remember to open the back garage door this morning, which prevented it from developing into an oven still hotter than outside, but I wonder about home canned goods. Would temps like that affect them? I only have so much room indoors to store things.

Does temperature affect home canned goods?

Most definitely. Heat is the enemy and cool storage is the goal. I'd move some rarely used items out of inside and into the garage so you can store the canned goods inside.

Hot storage causes seal failures, degrades the product even if the seal holds, and encourages growth of bacteria and molds.

From NCHFP:

Storing Canned Foods

If lids are tightly vacuum sealed on cooled jars, remove screw bands, wash the lid and jar to remove food residue; then rinse and dry jars. Label and date the jars and store them in a clean, cool, dark, dry place. For best quality, store between 50 and 70 °F. Can no more food than you will use within a year.

Do not store jars above 95° F or near hot pipes, a range, a furnace, in an uninsulated attic, or in direct sunlight. Under these conditions, food will lose quality in a few weeks or months and may spoil. Dampness may corrode metal lids, break seals, and allow recontamination and spoilage.

Accidental freezing of canned foods will not cause spoilage unless jars become unsealed and recontaminated. However, freezing and thawing may soften food. If jars must be stored where they may freeze, wrap them in newspapers, place them in heavy cartons, and cover with more newspapers and blankets.

Dave

Here is a link that might be useful: NCHFP Guidelines

Funny, I have more canned pickles and tomatoes that I can deal with. Latelly I am making cold pasta salads with some of these things. All my jars are in my celler and are always at about 73 degrees or under.

My Aunt, with 2 adults and 6 kids to feed, easily canned even more than that. Her cellar walls were home canned goods ceiling to floor. It blew my mind the first time I saw the cellar. One end had huge bins full of potatoes they grew themselves. Hundreds of pounds of spuds. The only foods they bought were the ones you couldn't grow, can or raise yourself in NY like sugar, coffee, bananas, many spices etc. She even grew her own dill for the pickles. All the kids had to help on the farm. No spending hours on the phone or watching TV while eating junk food. Those were sure different times.

Thank you Dave, you confirmed my suspicions. I guess I'll have to move my jars (and jars and jars) of legumes & grains out to the garage so I'll have enough room indoors.

My mom once carried around a dozen jars of canned tomatoes in the trunk of her car before delivering them about a week later, then said several weren't sealed! Well, no wonder! Yes, heat is definitely bad. I'm fortunate enough to have a room in the celler where it's always cool but never freezing, and a relative two generations ago already covered the window with dark paper. When our kids were home, we kept about 1,000 jars on the shelf, counting all the dried and canned, etc., and ate them all. One year you do all the jams you can think of and the next year you might have a bumper crop of sauerkraut, so it's always evolving. Such security!

When I was growing up I didn't know you could buy tomatoes already canned at the store. =) My mother canned all our tomatoes, chili sauce, chutney, jams and jellies.

My good friends just joined a CSA. I went to visit them and as a thank you gift wanted to get them a cookbook/coffee table book on cooking with farm fresh produce. I was AMAZED at the number of books available out there. This is a HOT topic, and for many good reasons that we've discussed here. Everyone had a book out on it. And I agree, canning is going to make a comeback. All these food scares will only increase as our world grows more hectic. There is an alternative. We once had vibrant agriculture all over this country, not too long ago. And as greenhouser said, kids did not get bored without TV or computer or their cell phone, lol! I think that's why canning went out of fashion for a while. Folks in my mom's generation had childhood nightmares about it . . . please, please, please, no more peas to shell, corn to shuck, beans to snap, cherries to pit, etc.! :)

Even though we plan to do a lot of traveling this year, I still have a nice garden and plan to do a lot of canning. Also plan on taking a lot of my own canned products with us. Safe, economical and tastes so much better.

Rachel, I hate to be discouraging since your DH went to all the trouble to build the pantry in the garage, but I wouldn't put legumes and grains out in a hot garage, either. The grains can go rancid in the heat and the legumes probably wouldn't fare so well, either. Sorry

ilene, I'm not happy about it either, but something's got to give. I simply don't have the room indoors. However, I do use the grain and legumes up fairly quickly, so I think it should be o.k.

After all, there are a lot of very hot countries in the Middle East and Africa where these things must be stored, so it must be possible.

One thing we have started doing is leaving the back door to the garage open so that it doesn't get hotter in the garage than it does outdoors...I figure the cats will deal with the occasional intrepid mouse that gets in there, and since our back yard is fenced, it isn't likely that anything bigger will make it.

rachelellen;

I would be concerned with ventilation - keeping the air moving then if the garage gets too warm. Some foods also pick up stuff in the air. You don't want your beans to taste like Gunk or kerosene or litter-pan.

Boy, do I need some help. Was given a Nation #7 pressure cooker canner. No directions. Have no clue how it even goes together. Any help out there? It is old. No manual. Am sure the gasket needs replacing. How can you check the pressure gauge? Any help will be appreciated.

I have a question...is it possible to can any recipe? I would like to make a big batch of a sweet chili dipping sauce and preserve it, and the recipes I have tried in the past have not been super enough to repeat. I feel like this is a dumb question, but canning things with acidity makes me think extra caution should be planned.

Thanks!

I just completed my first canning job today - strawberry jam! However, I'm slightly concerned since the recipe said it yielded "about 8 8-oz jars," and I made 12 jars, even though I felt my measurements of fruit and sugar were accurate. Since I didn't know it would fill so many jars I only put in the recommended 4 TB of lemon juice. Should I be concerned that the ratio of lemon juice/fruit won't be correct and the food could be dangerous to eat?