Hey, glad I can be your first customer :)

Wife and I are real noobs at this .

Also, last weekend my Wife and I canned some salsa and we did not leave 1/2" from the top, but from the fill line, which equated to leaving about an inch of headspace.

So we put the jars in the boiling water bath, and set a timer for 20 minutes, waiting to hear the jars " pop ". But they did not pop at 20 minutes , it took longer, like another 10 minutes before we heard the jars " pop " .

I'm thinking the extra headspace is the reason it took longer ???

But IDK, I'm new to this .

We've now had our jars of salsa in the boiling water bath for 30 minutes, and we've not heard the lids pop ................ is that unusual ?

The pop happens after you take the jars out of the water bath.

Actually I am a little surprised that you recipe says 20 minutes because even that sounds like a long time. Some recipes will say something like this, boil 10 minutes, turn off heat and remove pan lid and let set for 5 minutes. Remove jars from pot and place on rack or towel. After doing this you should hear each lid pop. If you don't hear them all pop, you can make sure they have sealed by pressing lightly on the flat (lid). If it is depressed and feels firm to the touch then it has sealed. If it didn't seal it will be slightly elevated and when you press down there will be "give" to the lid. If they are not sealed then they must be re-processed or put into the refrigerator and used in a short time. Sometimes they will pop as you are taking them out of the water bath, but usually it will be several minutes before they begin to pop. If this doesn't make sense to you, please ask your questions, because it is really important that you understand this part. Carol

We tried to become scientific :) , and the Wife and I are not scientists, if you can't tell.

We went by our elevation, which we are near 1100 ft above sea level, and recipe recommended 15 minutes and then add for anything above 1000 ft.

Thanks for the help, we need it.

I am also just over the 1.000 ft. mark and so I use the high elevation time. Going out on a limb here - I think lots of people don't realize that in lots of parts of OK they are subject to that higher elevation processing time.

The canning stuff I've read often says the lids might seal or "pop" quickly after processing (say, within a half hour) or they might seal within the next overnight/24 hours. Mine pop when they are sitting out of the water bath, on a towel, usually within about half an hour after processing. However, I have also had jars seal several hours after processing so I think that can be normal. Usually it says to leave them undisturbed to cool...if you have some that don't seal by the next morning, you can put them in a clean jar and re-process (or put them in the fridge and use within a shorter time frame.)

And, I have a breaking news flash for y'all. Not all brands and types of canning lids ping to let you know they sealed.

If you are using dome lids made by any company owned by Jarden (Ball, Kerr, etc.), that have the little raised up dome area in the center of the lid, they ping. These are the traditional canning lids used for decades and are the lids most folks are familiar with, but they aren't the only fish in the sea. If you are using flat lids made and sold by other companies, like the bulk lids I buy by the hundreds online from Lehman's, they don't have that raised up area and are, instead, completely flat across the board, so they don't ping when used.

The ping is not a requirement for all canning lids, rather it is an extra feature that easily lets the canner know the jars have sealed. I don't even listen for the pinging sound. I hear it in the back of my mind as it happens, but I don't count the pings to make sure every jar sealed. I just come back within 24 hours, and usually it is closer to 12-18 hours, remove every ring for storage, check the seal of each flat lid, and then move the jars to storage. I can around 600 jars of food per summer and I bet I don't have any more than 1 or 2 lids per year that fail to seal, if any fail at all. Most years there are no lids that fail to seal. Last year there was only 1. I've already canned over 300 jars this summer and haven't had a lid fail to seal yet.

And, being in a low-lying area at the far southern end of OK, my elevation is around 850', so I don't have to deal with the high altitude canning directions, which is nice.

lcdollar, By leaving the jars in too long, you probably overcooked the salsa, but that won't affect its safety. It might affect its flavor, but I don't think it will render it inedible or anything. I've never left a batch in too long, so don't know how the overcooking affects the flavor. When the water in the jar-filled boiling-water-bath canner reaches a full boil, I set the timer on my stove for the required time stated in the recipe and, when the timer rings, I turn off the burner and stop the canning process immediately. There's no reason to ever leave the jars in the boiling water bath for longer than the directions specified. Now that you're clear on that from all the comments here, the next time you can a batch of salsa or anything else, you won't have to wait for the ping and can use the proper time recommended for your elevation. That will make your next canning experience less stressful, I hope, and more fun.

Dawn

Thanks to all, I sure hope we did not spoil the flavor of that batch , it was a lot of work.

This is all new to me, and really, I'm just a go-between, my Wife doesn't do the internet. A co-worker gave her this water canning set and told her it was easy " just wait for the pop " . There were instructions with the set, she read them , I did not. I should've got on the internet sooner.

And then, we watched this segment of Oklahoma Gardening , starts at the 11:11 mark, the importance of PH.

Oklahoma Gardening

This sort've scared her, she did not know a mistake could be deadly :) . I'm thinking this made it more complicated, than maybe it should be ???

As long as you are following an approved canning recipe explicitly with no alternations of any kind (by approved, I mean approved/published by government entities that test these recipes for safety, as well as those published by canning companies that also have tested their recipes for safety), your food will be safe to eat. That includes canning only those recipes approved for boiling water bath canners in a boiling water bath and only those recipes in a pressure canner that have been tested/approved for pressure canning. The approved canning recipes have been tested for safety, and that includes food density and pH, but any alterations to the recipe that could change the density of the food and/or the pH would render it unsafe. It might not actually be unsafe, but it could be unsafe because the changes you made would not be something they had tested. So, deviating from a tested, safety-approved recipe is like playing Russian Roulette. Following a tested, safety-approved recipe will give you safe food. I hope that relieves any worry on your mind.

The Annie's Salsa recipe from the Garden Web Harvest Forum has been safety tested by the extension service in the state where its' developer lived when she came up with the recipe. It also has some safety-approved alterations you can make because these specific changes do not alter the density or the pH. After following the recipe for over a decade and trying to stay current on the various minor changes made to it over the years, I am confident it remains safe. For example, at one point you could can it in quarts, but now they say only pints. I'm okay with that. I'm sure the change was made for safety reasons. It is my favorite salsa canning recipe, and I specifically like that a person can use ReaLemon or ReaLime to replace some or all of the vinegar as these substitutions give you a home-canned salsa with less vinegary flavor. The reason ReaLemon and ReaLime can be used is that they consistently test at 5% acidity just like vinegar does. Off-brand lemon and lime juices did not consistently test at 5% acidity so are not an approved change. Or, if you want a hotter salsa, you can replace some of the green sweet peppers in the salsa with hot pepper (to go along with the jalapeno peppers already in the approved recipe) as long as the total amount of peppers in the batch doesn't change. So, sometimes I substitute 1/4 of hot peppers for 1/4 cup of the sweet peppers. It doesn't alter density or pH so it is a safe substitution.

Many people want to can their own salsa recipe or their Grandma's recipe or whatever, and that is not safe because those salsa recipes have not been safety-tested and approved for canning, no matter how tasty they are and not even in Grandma has been canning it for 40 years and no one has died (back to that Russian roulette thing again).

The thing to remember about canning is that it is different from cooking. When you are cooking, you can alter pretty much anything in a recipe and make the recipe your own, and that is fine. But when you are canning, you cannot alter anything unless it is a specific alteration that also has been safety tested. When alternations are allowed, the recipes usually so state. Hope this helps.

Dawn

The National Center for Home Preservation is a good place to check on line. It would be a good idea to buy your self a Ball Canning Book they have all the information that you need for successful canning at your finger tips.

I haven't canned since we've moved and I haven't had the space for a garden. But when I did can, I did exactly what Carol mentions if the jar doesn't "ping". I just check the top to ensure there's no give and if there is lightly push it down and it has always sealed if I needed to do it that way.

Dawn....600 JARS?!?! That is amazing!! My grandmother used to can and she had this little shed that my grandfather had built her. I think they call it something like a cold shed? Anyway, when she got alzheimer's and was no longer able to can, there were still jars in that little shed. I wish I would've had more time with her to learn from her.

I love canning but now have a glass top stove and am a bit concerned with canning on it. I did do some canning on the one I had back in Fairland, but I'm not willing to chance it again, lol. I am thinking of getting a turkey fryer bottom and using that for my canning pot. Has anyone tried this before?

Melissa

Melissa, It is a lot, and the hardest part is storing them and remembering where all of it is. I've finally worked out a system that makes sense to me if to no one else. I'd can twice as many if we liked canned veggies, but with beans, asparagus and such, we prefer frozen ones, so we have three freezers and that allows me to freeze tons of produce.

My dad built shelves in his garage (way up high where we children couldn't reach them) to hold his empty canning jars, but I have no idea where he kept them when they were filled. I just wasn't paying attention when I was a kid. I wish you'd been able to spend more time with your grandmother too. Alzheimer's is cruel. It took our dad from us too, and he had it for an exceptionally long time before his death--about 12 or 14 years, though I think I saw the first signs about 16 years before he died but I couldn't get anyone else in the family to see it. They stayed in denial a lot longer than I did (because it ran in his family, and he was one of the youngest, so we'd been down that road already with some of his older brothers and sisters).

I do boiling water bath canning on a glass top stove and it can work as long as you have a BWB canner that has a flat bottom instead of one of the ones with circular ridges and grooves. The one I have is the stainless steel one by Ball. I have had it since the first year it came out so it has been around a few years now, but I remember it had the word Elite in its name and it is a 21-qt. pot.

I don't do pressure canning on my stove for all the reasons you've probably read about, like the way the burner can turn on and off and heat up and cool down slightly and might fail to stay hot enough consistently enough for the long period of time needed for pressure canning.

Quite a few of the folks on the Harvest Forum use turkey fryers or plug-in countertop burners (like a really fancy hotplate). You might do a search at the forum and see what the search pulls up for you. I just saw a fancy plug-in extra burner somewhere the other day (though now I cannot remember where, and it was very impressive).

Dawn

Dawn,

I can't even imagine the ocd craziness I'd experience trying to figure out a system on storing all those jars, lol. I have enough issues as it is trying to keep my pantry and freezers all organized when my 16 yo daughter and 17 yo son come in and completely obliterate all I've done. :(

As far as the canner, you say that you don't use the one with the ridges on the bottom? The one I have is a Ball brand, but it does have grooves on the bottom. What is the difference in the grooves and non-grooves? You have sparked my canning interest again now since I know that you can on a glass top. Now, the only thing is if I could find a farm close to me that sells their produce for this year.

I have big plans for my yard next year. I am hoping to make one whole side of my back yard by the fence all raised beds. I'm so excited I can hardly contain it!!

Melissa

Amazon has the Ball stainless canning kettle, if you wanted to look at it.

Teenagers have a way of doing that. Then they grow up and go away to college and the house becomes oddly quiet, clean and tidy, and the food in the fridge, freezer and pantry lasts much, more longer....or until they come home for the weekend, dragging all their dirty laundry home with them.

The reason for the flat-bottomed canner is because canners with concave bottoms often cannot maintain a full rolling boil. I had to search for a while to find the canner I wanted. This seems to be more worrisome with pressure canning because a loss in heat means a loss in pressure and ruins a batch. I haven't had any trouble with my burner not keeping the canner at a full rolling boil.

Check with the manufacturer of your stove. Some manufacturers state in the warranty that their stove is not meant for use with canning and that canning on the stove can void your warranty. That may or may not matter to you but I thought I'd mention it.

Some people set up an outside canning area using the side burner on a gas grill, but I cannot imagine doing that in our heat in the summertime.

My DIL canned on her back porch on a grill burner because her stove has a gridle in the middle that kept her for using a big pot on the burner. She then bought an induction burner so she could work in a cool kitchen.

I use a water bath canner on my glass top also, but I have never used a pressure cooker on it. In fact, it has been a number of years since I have used my pressure cooker. I have several options if I wanted to do it outside, a grill burner, a turkey roaster, or a two burner camp stove. Mine looks something like this, but has table top at the end. Camp Chef

DH bought one of those 2 burner stoves, supposedly so I could can on it, but mostly HE wanted it. Never been out of the box. There are 3 steps and 2 dogs and a regular door to manuver to get to the back patio, I can't even lift a canner full of water in the kitchen! And you need a wind screen to maintain an even flame. I've noticed the patio is about 3 degrees hotter than every where else, I suppose because of the concrete heating up (faces south). I told him it was never going to happen.

Amy, That sounds just like a husband. Any time my husband says "look what I bought for you...", I know he really bought it for himself. I don't even mind that he buys stuff for himself, but why can't he just say "I bought this for me",

Carol, I think an induction burner was what I saw the other day, and I think it must have been at CostCo because that's where we were. Well, that and Wal-Mart, but I cannot imagine I went on any aisle in Wal-Mart that would have had an induction burner.

I canned quite a lot yesterday, and I don't intend to can today, but will be back in the kitchen canning tomorrow. That's my new method to attempt to prevent canning burnout---take a day off in between each day of canning. We'll see how that works out. It is only possible to do it now because the majority of the big tomato harvest is already canned, frozen or dehyrated. I couldn't have taken a day off, period, 2 or 3 weeks ago.

Today I haven't even been in the garden. I just glanced at it as I walked by it this morning, opened the gate so the chickens can go in and eat grasshoppers, saw ripening tomatoes on far too many plants, and moaned, groaned and promised myself I'd start ripping out more tomato plants (before they eat me alive) so I can do some fall planting. It is amazing how quickly our joy at having fresh, home-grown tomatoes turns to tomato fatigue where it is hard to think about picking and eating one more tomato. Luckily, the tomato fatigue passes quickly.

And those husbands look at you expectantly like you are supposed to be so thrilled with "your" gift, LOL.

That is so true!

By glass top stove do you mean an electric range? My daughter is wanting to learn to can with a Boiling Water Bath canner and she has an electric cook stove. So you can't use the regular BWB canners on them? It must be a flat bottom canner?

Yes, we are referring to stoves that have a completely level smooth top with the burners underneath the glass or ceramic top. In a lot of ways, I was happier when I had an older electric range that had the old coiled burners, but my glass topped stove has a 'Dehydrate' mode that I can use when in convection oven mode to dry food, so I'll never let go of this stove until the day it dies.

Here's what the NCHFP has to say about these smoothe topped ranges:

NCHFP: Canning on Smooth Top Stoves

If the regular BWB canners have concave or ridged bottoms, then they are not reliable for canning on smooth top stoves, and there are potentially other issues as well, though it will vary by manufacturer and model. A flat bottomed canner maintains heat more consistently.

I know plenty of people who can on them, but always monitoring very carefully and cautiously to make sure the water boils 100% of the time specified and watching their pressure canner to make sure the pressure doesn't drop. These stoves have burners that don't just heat up and stay at a set temperature. The burners are sort of self-regulating and can raise or lower their temperature to stay in a certain range, which is fine when cooking but could be a problem when canning if the temperature drops enough that the boiling water bath stops boiling briefly or if the pressure in a pressure canner drops. Also, with some pressure canning recipes that have a very long canning time, there was trouble with earlier generations of these stoves that the prolonged heat plus the heavy pressure canner combined to crack the stove top. This is why many manufacturers now state in their Owner's Guides that canning on the smooth top stove voids the warranty. There have been days I've canned batch after batch in the BWB canner all day long and never had a problem, but there's always a little down time as one batch cools and before you start up the next batch. Most BWB batches do not require the longer cooking times that pressure canning often requires, and that is an important difference.

Well, this explains a lot to me ............... after my shoulder surgery on May 9th, my Wife had to mow the lawn, so I bought her a new lawn mower ...... now I see why she was not thrilled :)

Ha ha ha ha ha ha!

I actually wanted an electric weed wacker because I can't start a gas one. If I had to mow the lawn it would have to be electric.

:)

I've been havin a lot of fun talking bout her new lawn mower ......... but seriously, my old one was getting really hard to start. IDK if she could do it and I couldn't either.

And the self propel feature was wearing out, it had become mostly a push mower.

It was time for a new Honda, anyway. But I kid her bout not being happy with her new mower :).

A few weeks ago, we were at Home Depot buying some bags of mulch they had on sale. And she had to load these bags on the cart. Doctors told me to not lift anything heavier than a cup of coffee.

So people are staring at me, as they see her struggling with these big bags of mulch and I'm standing there watching her ( I was out of my sling , by then ). Then I get dirty looks when she's pushing this heavy cart up to the checkout :)

I would say thats what HD employees are for, but you can't find any one if you need them!

lcdollar, Ha ha! If it was really for her, it should have had a bright pink paint job. I wonder if they make pink lawnmowers?

Hmmm, time for a new Honda? Say that to a woman and she's probably dreaming of a new Accord, Civic or a CR-V, not a lawnmower.

I think people are pretty sharp. If I see a woman doing the heavy lifting, I assume the guy with her has an arm or shoulder thing going on (partly because my husband and son both have shoulder problems though).

Amy, Same here. I could carry around a weedwacker and trim away weeds all day if I could start the darn thing. I don't know why they are so hard to start. It drives me up the wall. By the time I finally manage to get the thing to start (IF I get it to start), I'm too tired to use it.

Dawn

Amy, that is the truth, Home Depot can not be accused of hiring too many people, and the mulch was out in the parking lot. But if ya do find somebody, they not much help.

Actually Dawn, she is putting the bug in my ear about new Accord or most likely a Civic. But the Honda mowers are the best. I used it for the first time yesterday ( which was a rehab victory for me ) and the self propel is strong. And it starts with the slightest pull on the cord.

My husband bought himself a new toy - a commercial wed eater. And I am VERY happy with it, too. Still, I think it sparked a fit of jealousy from my neighbors. I love to weed eat. I tell ya.. if they were nice I'd weedeat their yard for them! I swear, some people.

BTW, our salsa turned out fine . We can not tell any diff in flavor from an earlier batch. And all of our jars are sealed. We tried to mess it up, but failed.

So next step is to can tomatoes.

Good for you, lcdollar. That fear of canning is a very healthy fear. Later it turns into a healthy observance of procedures. I'm pretty good at following written directions, but when it came to canning I was glad Mr. Coleman took the time to allow me to experience it.

I need to can something, soon, lest I forget how. Great post!

lcdollar, Congratulations on your rehab victory. You have been smart to let your arm heal properly because failing to let it heal properly could mean more surgery or months of physical therapy down the road. It is so much better, I think, to let it heal properly the first time so you don't have more trouble later on

I'm glad the salsa turned out fine. I agree with Bon that having a slight fear of canning is often a good thing as it makes the individual doing the canning follow the procedures carefully which results in a safe product. I won't say I have any fear of canning after all these years of doing it, but I have a healthy respect for doing it correctly and with following all the safety-approved procedures. I always keep the recipe I'm using right in front of me even if it is something I have canned dozens or even hundreds of times. It is just too easy to skip a step if you let your brain go onto auto-pilot.

Dawn

Al's Air Force friends weren't even that subtle with their comments. When they would watch him buy something for me, they would say, "What's wrong, didn't she need a new gun?"

I use an electric weedeater, and a Troybuilt lawn mower that is easy to start. Now if it will even dry up maybe my yard will look like a yard instead of a pasture. I actually like to mow, but my allergies don't like it much.

Ha, my daughter would be like "Heck yeah I need a new gun" so would all my DILs. One of which was in the Air Guard.

Okiedawn, Thank you for the information.

authereray, You're welcome.

After learning to can salsa , my Wife and I are now thinking about canning the tomatoes themselves. Does this take a pressure canner or can it be done with water bath canning ? Would it not be necessary to increase the acidity of the tomato ?

This is really cool, we are now thinking about expanding the garden with other vegetables for canning.

Uh oh. This is how it starts. It starts with salsa and then progresses to more and more things. Congrats on the start of your canning addiction.

With tomatoes, they generally can be canned in a boiling water bath canner as long as the main ingredient is just tomatoes. Now, if you go and add something like okra or zucchini to the tomatoes following an approved recipe, those must be pressure canned. So, select a recipe you're interested in, and read it thoroughly to see if it calls for canning in a boiling water bath canner or a pressure canner.

As for acidification, the National Center for Home Food Preservation addresses that right here:

Intro to How To Can Tomatoes

You can use ReaLemon Juice or Citric Acid. Each recipe tells you the quantities needed per jar.

Here's the tested, approved recipes for canning from the National Center for Home Food Preservation.

Canning Tomatoes

You can find additional recipes in the Ball Blue Book, sold on the canning aisle at Wal-Mart for less than $10.00. A new BBB comes out every few years and I always buy the updated one as soon as I see it in the stores.

Another simple way to start out with canning certain tomato produts is to use the Mrs. Wage's Mixes, which include mixes for pasta sauce, pizza sauce, catsup, salsa and chili base. You can find these mixes (sometimes) on canning aisles in local stores or can go to the Mrs. Wage's website and order them directly. If I am ordering them online, I order them in the spring, well before I will need them because shipping can take quite a while during the summer rush. Usually by this late in the tomato canning season here, the only Mrs. Wage's tomato mixes left on the shelves are the more common ones like pasta sauce and salsa. The catsup, chili base and pizza sauce sell out more quickly, likely because the stores stock lower quantities of these.

Hope this helps.

Dawn

Icdollar,

I taught my self to use a boiling water bath canner when I was 58 yrs. old canning tomato juice and pickled okra that has been quite a while ago and now I can what ever I take a notion to try. I started out using National Center for Home Preservation on line then I bought a Ball Canning Book. It's not hard to do if you follow instructions and make sure you keep every thing sanitized that is very important. If I can do it anyone can. Good luck.

Just yesterday , my wife was wondering how people figured out canning and preserving hundreds of years ago. It had to be trial and error. I wondered how many died of botulism till they understood it :)

I had already ordered the Ball Blue book, am still waiting on it. We've been giving away 3/4 of our tomatoes , maybe now we can find a way to enjoy more of them ourselves.

And I'm interested in peppers......... jalepeno , banana, habenero, etc.

Our house backs up to Jr High school property. There's a large area that never gets used, probably 10 to 20 acres, and its just nothing but weeds that creep into my yard. I'm thinking seriously bout talking with the school , to see if they let me garden on that property. I could really expand then and the need for canning would grow. I can't imagine why the school would object other than the guy that mows it with a brush hog would have to go around it. And most of my plants would start producing when school is out, so the Jr High kids would not be there to mess with it.

Icdollar, as to our ancestors, and canning, there are several theories to why they survived (or maybe didn't survive). Most importantly, there weren't agencies keeping track of such things. People who canned lived in rural areas, and deaths were often idiopathically attributed. Probably more folks than we realize died to faulty preservation of food. Take pickles for example: I know Dawn and others here can better elaborate on the history of pickle-making, but my understanding is that our canning ancestors of yesteryear had access to stronger vinegars than we do today, which allowed them to use a lower proportion of vinegar to water in their pickle-making; which is why we probably shouldn't use our great-grandma's pickle recipe. Nonetheless, following the guidelines, we can enjoy the canning and rest easier knowing that we are in the "safe zone".

Icdollar, I love your screen name. Every time I pronounce it in my head, I immediately think, "cold cash". lol

I think some of the vinegars used long ago (often even when people were making their own vinegar, which some people still do today) were much stronger. I believe I've read 40% in some cases compared to todays standard 5%. Even the horticultural-strength vinegars used as herbicides are only 20%.

People have preserved food for centuries, including fermentation, pickling, dehydration and preservation by very heavy salting. I am not sure how long ago canning as we now know it came into common usage, but I know that some canned foods were developed in the USA as a way to feed the soliders in the Civil War era. The French were canning some foods as early as the very early 1800s. I think one of their methods was to can the foods and use them unless the cans started swelling, which was an indication the food had spoiled. To me, that seems a lot like Russian roulette. Catsup/ketchup and some other condiments came to us as a result of people trying to create sauces that would cover up the flavor of spoiled meat. Think about that one for a while. When you read through some of the old canning recipes, some of the things they did/used are just horrifying. I'm glad we live in a more enlightened age.

Many previous canning methods once approved for use in the USA (sealing jams and jellies with wax, for example) have fallen by the wayside and no longer are recommended as safe processing methods. Some foods that could be safely canner in my parents and grandparents day no longer have approved home-canning processes for them. I bet that a lot of the methods and recipes once used by our great-grandparents, grandparents and even parents are not recommended for use today as research continually finds new ways to make the processes safer. I know that my dad's mother and sisters preferred pickling as much as possible way back in the early 1900s because if you use enough vinegar, sugar and salt, you can make safe pickles out of tons of different kinds of food. To me, that choice reflected some sort of knowledge about what worked best and seemed safest in their era.

I do remember that a lot of the southern women I knew who canned in the 1960s and 1970s often cooked their canned goods almost to death after opening up a jar. Why? Because their mothers did. Why did their mothers do that? I think they were boiling the veggies hard for 10-20-30 or more minutes in order to possibly kill off any toxins that might have grown in the jars after the food was canned. They didn't have the extensive research we have today to assure them that they were using the safest possible preservation process, so they were extra careful to try to safeguard their families. I expect quite a few people died of botulism and other food-related illnesses back in the day, and am grateful that is a rarity nowadays. It still happens today, and the few cases I've read about in recent years seemed to most often involve green beans that accidentally were canned in a boiling water bath instead of in a pressure canner, and also some meat products where something went wrong.

Mary, That's hysterical that the bomb squad couldn't break that seal on that canner, but I've heard other cases of canners sealed shut in such a way that nobody ever could get into them. I'm not ever going to suggest to my spouse that he and his bomb squad/SWAT team members try to blow up a canner to release the seal because I'm afraid the idea would intrigue them a bit too much and he'd want me to deliberately mess up my pressure canner just so they could try to get it open. I have a feeling I'd lose the pressure canner in the process.

One of the most horrific developments in the last 10-15 years is that certain terrorist groups have used pressure canners to make IEDs. That makes a chill run up my spine. What a terrible misuse of a great kitchen helper.

Dawn

Dawn, I had already set the pressure canner out for disposal. I don't know if he actually took it to his team, I just think HE decided he could get that lid off one way or the other;). It was just too funny to see that he had practically destroyed the thing..but the lid wasnt coming off. NO matter what. lol

Dawn, this evil has gotten out of hand. This week, and next, I am afraid. My youngest is in Japan on business, and my oldest and her boys are in Costa Rica on vacation. I shudder. I don't like this international traveling stuff.

I agree with you. I will be praying for your youngest, your oldest and her boys for a safe journey. Everything is so crazy nowadays that it is hard to know where, when, or how anyone can feel truly safe.

For 35 years, Tim has gone to work and I have not had to worry excessively that he will not come home at the end of his shift. In the last two weeks, that has flown out the window. I mean, you know how it is---when someone you love works in law enforcement, there's always a certain level of concern about their safety, but you know the odds and you know they're likely to come home. After all that is going on recently, I no longer feel certain he'll come home at the end of the day. However, I'd never demand that he give up a career he loves. I know I am gong to feel antsy every day until I hear his car coming up the driveway.

Dawn, I know. I don't know what to say, because you already said it best.