You know, I'd just feed the eggs back to the animals or toss them if you are concerned about it. Break the eggs one at a time into a dish to check for funny smells, etc. first though. :) You ought to see some of the wierd places MY hens lay away in--! An empty trash can, the BBQ, the rabbit hutch, in a planter filled with gravel and my personal favorite, suspended IN a sage bush! We were foolishly looking UNDER the bush for eggs... Hens LOVE to feel that they are hiding their nests, especially banties. Clever little snots. Right now they have a sneaky spot on the concrete patio, between a plastic storage tub and a folding plastic table, for cri-yi. Your girls might be getting the urge to go broody (rooster or no). You can partially solve the 'laying away' problem by making the nest boxes the most attractive place to lay eggs. Hens love dark hidey-hole type nests. I use wooden nest boxes that are enclosed except for the front. I tacked up some black woven plastic groundcloth over the front like a curtain, with a slit cut up the middle of the front of the box opening. Add lots of straw for nest material. The hens love it! :) Good luck with the egg hunt! Velvet ~:>

Allenwrench, I have recently done something similar, been consuming the product and we are in good health. There were some differences though. It was pickled peppers, I used 5:1 5% vinegar, water and pickling spices (5 cups vinegar and 1 cup water), but we did put the jars directly in the fridge, this is where they will live until the pickles are consumed. About the rest of the processing, the vinegar/water/spice mix was brought to a boil, the peppers where lightly steamed just to get them hot, jars sterilized, punctured peppers packed in the jars, vinegar mixture poured in jars, covered and let cool. When cool refrigerate. We also made other hot pepper pickles to keep longer (outside the fridge) but we pressure canned those.

keepitlow, The recommendations from the USDA and the Assn for Food Preservation say to can even fruit purees and syrups for five minutes (if jars are sterilized --- ten if not, so you sterilize the jars). But in England it's completely the normal process just to put hot fruit into sterilized jars. Since the worst that's likely to happen is mould, like Melissa I would happily eat your open-kettle-canned syrup (I'll even make the pancakes!). But I second the advice not to try to skip the canning at all unless you will keep it in the fridge --- SO sad to have good syrup go mouldy! Note that there does seem to be some evidence that the percentage of failed seals is somewhat higher if you don't do the BWB. I've done a few batches of jam that way in the past, and didn't have any noticable problem personally with the seals, but it wasn't a very big sample. I find it's not much more trouble to BWB fruit or syrup than to sterilize the jars so I do, but that's not a safety concern, since if you find a jar unsealed in your pantry you'll know not to eat it (and it'll probably be icky anyway). Zabby

> I don't imagine things are different in Canada, Zabby. Actually, there are some significant differences, which is why there's work for me on accounting texts here, most of which are adaptations of U.S. books. But the overriding principles we're arguing about are universal. > In the U.S. there are 7 sets of GAAPs. I don't know any accountants who talks of "sets of GAAPs" --- they're not like the ten commandments, but a large body of principles and customs. > However, "So the overall cost of my life doesn't go up if I start using that shovel to grow veggies." doesn't ring true in this case. We are not measuring the total cost of your life. We are trying to make a comparison between the costs of a home-canned jar of something with what it costs to buy that something. So, in this case, you have to include all those bits and pieces in order to compare like to like. Ah, but here is where I think your logic is truly faulty. As I said, accounting is a decision-making tool. It helps businesses make decisions about their finances, governments make decisions about how much tax to charge you, and people make decisions about what to do with their money, time, etc. (though of course it's not the only or even the most important factor in those decisions, as we have all agreed in the case of canning and gardening). So accounting helps you ask various questions and get answers that compare things. Now, you seem to be asking the question "How much does it cost a company, starting from building the factory, to make and sell a can of tomatoes, vs. how much it costs a person, starting with absolutely nothing, to make a can of tomatoes?" As an academic exercise, it may be interesting, but it's irrelevant to most real situations. The question I was talking about is the useful one: what is the overall extra cost (or savings) to my life is I can veggies instead of buying them? If I already own a shovel to grow my flowers with, that shovel has been already "paid for" out of my "growing flowers as a hobby" cost centre in my life. If I "charge" some of it to my canning cost centre, then I'm double expensing it --- a no-no according to GAAP in any country. > There's also another aspect we haven't begun to look at: Cost of possession. When you are buying things you generally buy for immediate needs, or maintain a very small inventory. Not necessarily. I know plenty of people who buy canned goods by the caseload from Costco or Price Club. But the general point is true that there is a cost of maintaining inventory --- though it can't be generalized to a particular percentage for most situations. It depends a great deal on how the inventory is managed and where it's kept. (That cost is much higher, for e.g., in places where space is expensive, or for goods that require special circumstances --- so the cost of possession was way higher for things I stored frozen in the city than for a canned good in my larger small-town home.) A much bigger often-uncounted cost by many people is the land --- I would have bought a home with a smaller yard if I hadn't known I wanted a veggie garden. So part of my mortgage every month should reasonably be costed to my veggies. On the other hand, the veggies I grew in Toronto were in my BF's backyard which he wasn't using anyway, so it would have been UNreasonable to apply the space cost there. It's comparable to, say, vacant land that a municipality donates to a company to help entice them to move to that municipality. SImilarly, one's labour time should be charged only if, realistically, one would have been making money if one wasn't canning. (In my case this is sometimes true.) If one does it for sheer joy, then it's comparable to volunteer labour. > The fact is, most opportunity costs are unrealistic. Sure, if you weren't canning you could spend that time on a ski trip. But would your _really_ make that trip? Probably not. Opportunity costs are hard to measure, because who can say for sure what one WOULD have done? But they are absolutely real, and companies that ignore them in their accounting make worse decisions. In the case of many people who regard canning as a hobby, if they weren't canning, tney'd be doing something else recreational, very possibly something that costs money. > Number one: You cannot can food less expensively than you can buy it. Well, the main difference between us probably really is that I think you're using a definition of "less expensively" that is irrelevant to the question most people trying to make this calculation are actually asking --- and I mean quite apart from including the whole "priceless experience" factor. One that I suspect would, in fact, be rejected by an auditor. Even under my definitions, mind you, I think many people, probably including me, don't save money by canning. But I think some people do. Sigh. I am tired of arguing this one, too, GL, and I don't actually have any expectation you will change your mind; the only reason I am bothering, is that actual cost, in a realistic, practical sense, DOES enter into it for some folks. (I have one friend, for example, who canned fruit during grad school to save money.) And for those people who might want or really need to economize in this way, it's not helpful to say categorically it can't be done, nor to claim that some supposed "rule" of accounting means they "have" to count certain things as costs that don't make sense in the real situation. It shows a misunderstanding (all too common) of what accounting actually means. > Number two: Who cares? We can for all sorts of great reasons, and actual cost hardly enters into it. For me it sure doesn't, I am 100% with you on that! And we do agree on the main thing that the experience and great product are the most important, for us. Z