Well, if you're doing it wrong I've been making the same mistake for 40 years.

Carol

macky, I'd like to see the photo from 10 seconds later, when the jar slips and smashes to the floor!

Like you, I learned to can without anyone showing me, and had to figure the jar lifter out, and belive me, I TRIED it both ways. THat's how I discovered that the curved, covered part fits a canning jar neck EXACTLY---in fact, it's so clever that if fits it whether you hold them vertically, picking up the jar from above, OR horizontally, picking up the jar from beside.

The flat rollers, on the other hand, don't exactly conform to a jar shape! I assume they are meand to be handles, though I have tried (with mediocre success) sometimes using them to pick lids out of hot water.

Where did you see the photo? If it was illustrating a magazine or newspaper story about canning, my guess is that the photographer (and maybe writer!) don't actually DO any canning, and so got the props and set up a photo shoot but didn't know how to use them.

Probably no jar was actually picked up---the shot was probably set up to look like one was about to be. (If any were, as I said, they likely dropped.)

How amusing!

Zabby

The photo was in the October 2008 Bon Appétit magazine I just got in the mail. They had a little article there on canning, explaining how to do it safely and including a few recipes. I made the tomato sauce recipe on page 119 and it's the best I've ever made. :) I want to try the Green Tomato and Red Onion Relish next. It just was so odd to see that photo introducing the article.

P.S. Okay, rofl! I searched the bon appétit site and found this (link below). Scroll down to the comment section... ha ha!

Here is a link that might be useful: bon appétit link

Too funny!

I am guilty, however, of using them upside down the first time I tried them (used tongs for twenty years - please do not comment on my utter stupidity) and was convinced these were just another useless gadget to clog up my drawer.

I was set straight by my three-year-old grand-daughter who was playing with the jar lifter and canning rings (along with clothespins, still her favorite toys) and SHE used it correctly. Now just how dumb do you think I felt? Duh...

Oh dear, malna... thank you for making me feel better for asking the question, though. :) I guess it really wasn't such a dumb question!

Yeah, I sometimes think it's a miracle I have survived this long with all four limbs intact and head still attached (brain may not be included ;-)

I'm going to have to check for that issue of the magazine when I go to the store. Does make you wonder, though, about the trustworthiness of the recipes.

On the other hand, remembering how easy it isto turn a photographic image upside-down or backwards, I wonder if it could have been a photo-edit or printing problem and not the fault of the original writers.

Carol

Page 117... my camera was handy. :)

Wow! That is egregious. It's pretty clear the person in the studio had not a clue.

(My jar lifter is old and olive green and definitely the aesthetic is lacking when I'm using it, LOL.)

Carol

Hee, hee.

It's still almost certainly not the fault of the writers and/or recipe developers; they were probably not there at the photo shoot. (The text & illustrations for a magazine are created by quite separate departments.)

The photographer, probably working with a food stylist and maybe an art director, would have had instructions for what kind of photos to take (in a book this is called an "art manuscript"; I don't know if it has the same name in popular magazines but it'll be the same idea).

The fault is that the author or production editor who wrote the instructions wasn't clear enough. There's no excuse. But I do have some sympathy; I used to write art manuscripts for educational texts, explaining to an artist or photographer what an illustration should be like, and it's AMAZINGLY hard to think of everything to describe the perfectly clear idea in your head. And amazing the number of things you have to think of to tell the artist NOT to do (like, in an illustration for a French text, not to have any English signs in the background).

I teach a course for beginning editors; I think I have to get my hands on that issue. Everyone knows about typographical errors, but that is a great example of the kinds of other problems that can arise from poor process in publishing!

Zabby

Red non slip rubber grips of grabbing the slippery wen wet glass. I grab at the area just below the screwed on bands, where there is a glass bead that helps the tongs grab better. Yet another 'fowel up' from a supposed high quality publication, that simply doesn't proof read its photos very much.. I have both a blue rubber grip one, as well as the older green one. The older green one has rivets at the hinged sides. The newer blue one has just bent wires that stay in place with pressure. Yes, would love to see how long you can hold a jar by its wooden roller handles. I sometimes lift and flip my jars upside down, and that could never be done if the grip slipped! The sides of these tongs are also curved, so you can pick up at the end as well as either side of the tongs.

Okay, so first I was embarrassed and now I'm entertained, lol!

Zabby, I'm currently a graphic designer and I used to work as an ad designer at the local paper. Not exactly the same situation as yours, but I can relate to the frustration of trying to explain every detail or reasoning to someone. The quality and composition of the images some customers supplied were unusable and you almost had to teach a course to the salespeople each and every time because the designers weren't allowed to speak directly to the customer. Made you wanna tear your hair out some days!

ahem.. well.. I took a class at the cooperative extension last month and the presenter was using her jar lifter upside down.. boy was she struggling with it..

I politely corrected her off to the side and her response was "Can you tell I don't have one of these?"

How entertaining! I just finished canning my last batch of Annie's salsa :(, no more tomatoes. I took a look at my jar lifter that I bought umpteen years ago, probably at an antique shop or antique flea market. It has green wooden handles and across the bar at the bottom of the handles it says YO-MO Monticello, Va. Makes me wonder how old it is, but hey, it works....holding it by the wooden handles, yet.

Ken
I have both kinds of lifters. My favorite one is with the bent sides like you have. I trust it better than the one with the rivets on the sides.

Actually, I use the rivet one more often as it would never pop out of that bent 'joint'. Its been used quite a lot and has never let me down yet.. I have colanders and ladles that have welded handles. These tend to break off at the welds. My favorite tool is a 2 cup flat bottom stainless steel ladle. Two scoops nearly fill a quart jar. One scoop a pint. I had to use special tin sliver solder to reattch the handle, and its lasted a long time now. Same with one of my stainless steel mesh colanders when a welded foot broke off.

I got my good laugh for the day. For eons, I used a potholder and my daughter bought me a lifter just a couple of years ago.

I have seen photos in the media where you could tell mistakes were made at various points in the game. I'm a horticulturist and go berserk when my clients bring in pictures of arrangements in magazines, even numbered in a diagram as to cultivars......so the readers can identify what plants make up that arrangement, and find out they are incorrectly labeled. Also have seen recommendations in magazines to mail order from certain nurseries I know have been out of business for years. LOL. The worst mistake, not caught by any proofer was a picture of an English shephard dog with the caption that a local family had brought their foreign-adopted child home to this country.

Oy

macky,
You have my sympathies indeed! And my admiration---I've always been strictly a "words" person, and am always astonished by the talent of people who have a flair for working with images, spatial relations, format, etc. I will say that creating art manuscripts, while challenging, has been one of my favourite tasks as an editor for that reason---it's the closest I get to creating an illustration myself, and when it works right it's kind of magic to see my words become realized as art!

calliope,
LOL! After 20 years as an editor, I have see plenty of cringe-worthy errors, but I still got a chuckly out of that one. All publishing professionals know that there really is no such thing as a perfect document, even if everyone involved does their jobs. But competent people and, above all, a good PROCESS can avoid most of the worst mistakes. The process is really key---the temptation to skip that final check ("so many people have already seen it, and the deadline is so pressing!") almost always backfires if one gives into it.

I think my favourite error statement was one where a newspaper apologized that, in a caption for a photo from a local Asian cooking class, what they had said was the name of the dish shown was actually the name of one of the students!

Z

OMG, that is hilarious! I hadn't yet read my BA this month! I went to the website and they've now got it corrected, but it's definitely not just a typo. In the mag, even the line drawings show the lifter upside down, every time, consistently across the entire article which is supposed to be a how-to piece! LOLOL! How embarrassing for BA!