Girlfriend - I use the small mouth quart jars for canning salsa. It's easier to pour out the salsa from those than the larger ones which I find ususally means pouring out more than intended and having a mess. Plus, I think the small mouth seals and rings are a few cents less than the large mouth replacements.

And nope, I don't need any but you're good to share the bargain. Just took inventory and I've still got a case of quart jars, over 2 and 1/2 of pints and 1 & 1/2 of half-pints. Last year, I "inherited" 4 boxes of jars from a friends' mom who is no longer canning! This is the same friends' mom who gave me the COOL 1946 refrigerator! (I think I've been adopted!)

Paula

Wish I had a store that sold ANY size canning jars for $2.88. I finally broke down and bought a new cold packer. I had the pan but not the rack and lid, so I have been using the largest pots in my kitchen to BWB. My canner isn't deep enough for BWB, and although I have some super large pans, I had to do more than one batch on several things. I have some things in another storage location so maybe I will come across the other lid and rack someday.

My husband's grandmother gave me her jars the other day but they were mostly quarts, and I still have unused quarts. I bought two more boxes of pints and a box of jelly jars because I thought I might need them later and they wouldn't be there. If I can green beans, I use quarts, but this year I didn't have enough to bother with. I do salsa in pints and that is plenty big for us.

Although it is a pain to store extra, it is nice to have a few.

Wish I had a store that sold ANY size canning jars for $2.88. I finally broke down and bought a new cold packer. I had the pan but not the rack and lid, so I have been using the largest pots in my kitchen to BWB. My canner isn't deep enough for BWB, and although I have some super large pans, I had to do more than one batch on several things. I have some things in another storage location so maybe I will come across the other lid and rack someday.

My husband's grandmother gave me her jars the other day but they were mostly quarts, and I still have unused quarts. I bought two more boxes of pints and a box of jelly jars because I thought I might need them later and they wouldn't be there. If I can green beans, I use quarts, but this year I didn't have enough to bother with. I do salsa in pints and that is plenty big for us.

Although it is a pain to store extra, it is nice to have a few.

Seedmama,

Woo-hoo! Nothing like a great deal on canning supplies.

I've never seen jars for $2.88 either. That is amazing.

Sometimes I feel like I buy a box of jars every time I walk into the store....but I like having them stacked up in the canning closet in case I get a sudden urge to can something. I do have a lot of folks who are (supposedly) saving jars to return to me after they eat the goodies inside of them. If they don't return the jars for me to refill, I believe I'll cross them off my list.

Not long ago, one of DS's co-workers sent me a case of new jelly jars "just because" to say thank you for some tomatoes and peppers I'd sent them. To me, a case of jars is a perfect gift, so I guess he has me all figured out already!

I get nervous if I don't have a stash of empty jars somewhere waiting to be filled.

Dawn

Dawn - how funny! A co-worker (15 year history and she's also my "secretary". How'd that happen???) also bought me a case this year just because! She's a very dear friend even without that effort. I've already made sure she's gotten 5 jars back and I'm planning on giving her several more.

I also follow the "return and fill" rule. Sadly, my own sisters are THE WORST about it! This year at the holidays, I'm thinking they're just not going to get anything. Think they'll notice? Another co-worker returned hers over a weekend and asked if there was more! Can you imagine eating bread & butter pickles for supper? Seedmama - you know her!

Guess we're getting tired of talking about the bugs and the heat so we'll find something else of interest, huh? LOL

Paula

Paula,

DS's co-worker's name is Roy and I've never met him, but he must have gardening family members because he is so appreciative when I send peppers and tomatoes to the guys at the station. I've noticed the folks who are most appreciative when receiving fresh produce or home-preserved foods are those who know just how much work it takes to raise and/or can those home-grown veggies.

When Roy sent me the case of jars via Chris, I immediately packed up a case of 12 jars of assorted home-canned goodies for Roy and his family and sent them back to him via DS on their next work day. (One good turn deserves another.) In that assortment was my last jar of Blueberry-Lime Jam. A few days later, DS said that 'my' Blueberry-Lime Jam reminded Roy of his grandmother's Blueberry-Lime jam and that they loved it. So, I assume the Blueberry-Lime Jam recipe has been in the BBB forever and that his grandmother likely made exactly the same recipe 'back then' that we still make today. Just a reminder that there's nothing really new under the sun.

I think that we have to talk about something or we'll go crazy...and canning/dehydrating/storing the harvest is an important part of being a gardener too. After all, if your garden is producing well, there's no way you can eat all the produce fresh, assuming the garden is large like yours and mine.

I was harvesting okra yesterday evening and noticed I have about a gazillion peppers to harvest. Gggrrrrr. I haven't even used up all the peppers I harvested last week. Uh oh.

I simply cannot let the peppers start piling up like this because you remember what happened to me last year. I've been working hard to can peppers every week so I don't get behind like that again, but there's a million things on my 'to do' list everyday, and sometimes I don't have time to can. I guess today I could smoke some and freeze them to go with the 2 or 3 or 4 gallons of peppers already in the freezer.

Tim hurt his back yesterday when he and DS were moving the big deep freeze from the garage into the house. I had read that motors on deep freezes kept in outbuildings often burn out in 2 or 3 years because they have to work so hard to keep the freezer cold enough, so I've been asking (alright, nagging) Tim for months to move the freezer into the dining-room-turned-TV-room-turned food storage room/Mom's hobby room. Finally, DS and DH were both here at the same time and thought they'd move it yesterday. You probably have to be a woman to appreciate this next bit because it so perfectly illustrates that macho man type attitude that hurts men......

I was in the once-formal dining room in which we rarely dined (except for holidays we eat in the breakfast room so to me the dining room is wasted space if all you use it for is holiday dining), moving things around to make room for the freezer and Tim comes in, grimacing, and telling me we'd "have to" empty the freezer in order to move it because it was too heavy to lift fully filled. Really? I was practically speechless and all I could say was "What were you thinking? Tell me you didn't try to lift it fully loaded? Of course we have to unload it. I knew that. What were you thinking? What were you thinking? What were you thinking?" Sheesh, men! Who in the world would try to move an almost-full 18 c.f. chest-style deep freeze without taking the food out of it??????

So, he made a trip to the chiropractor yesterday and will make another one tomorrow because he apparently either strained or sprained his back. When he called his boss and told him he wouldn't be at work yesterday because he hurt his back trying to lift a full deep freeze, the boss asked him what he was thinking and said something like 'you do know how old you are, right'? lol

I don't know if a hurt back from moving a freezer qualifies as a garden-related injury but it should because almost everything in that freezer came from our garden.

Finally, who are we to say someone can't have bread and butter pickles for dinner or supper or even breakfast? When we have jalapeno poppers left over from lunch or dinner, I like to eat them for breakfast the next day. Well, they are wrapped in bacon, so that's a breakfast food, right?

Dawn

I never understood why my grandmother was always so adamant about getting her jars back whenever she gave us pickles or applesauce or green beans or jam. She had a strict "refills" policy--bring back those jars BEFORE you get any more. It seemed so crazy to me as a kid why she would care so much about those jars! I mean they were just jars, right??

Now, I get it!

lol

I get it too.

My dad used to put his empty canning jars on special shelves he built very high in our garage, which had a tall, peaked roof. Why? He didn't want for someone to steal his jars! This was way back in the 1960s and 1970s when theft seemed more rare than it is today, and if someone stole anything from your garage or shed (neither of which people even locked back in those days), it likely was a lawnmower. I remember thinking "who would steal canning jars?". Nowadays, I look at it differently and realize he had a lot of money invested in those jars and didn't want to have to replace them.

Because so much of what we give away goes to DH's coworkers at Christmas, we don't get those jars back and I just consider them part of the gift we gave them. For everyone else that we randomly give things to, I expect the jars back, althought I don't always get them back.

DS's coworkers at the fire station have a box that they put the jars in when they've cleaned out those jars at work and he brings those jars home to me, but I don't know if I'll ever get back the jars that the guys carry home to their families.

Since much of what I can comes from the garden, I probably have more money invested in the jars than in the contents of the jars.