I have several stock pots that are deep enough for jars plus the extra for water above and below that I use for smaller batches. I don't understand how jars get jiggled, you use a jar lifter to remove the jars, and you place the jars into the water AFTER the pan in on the stove. By shutting off the heat (gas or electric) stoves, you don't need to remove the canner. My canner (pressure or WB) stays on the same burner during the entire canning day and doesn't move (it's really too heavy for me to move with the water in it). Water in WB shouldn't need to be boiling with so much effort to knock the jars over.

>> It sounds like you are relying upon an out-of-date >> manual that does not correspond to current standards. >> Generally canner manuals are re-printed year after >> year and are seldom updated. No, as mentioned above, I am using the current NCHFP guidelines, NOT the table in the old outdated manual which says I should use 5 lbs. for 10 minutes. >> Are you sure you were looking at the correct section >> of the NCHFP chart? For a weighted-gauge canner >> processing is not recommended above 1000 feet. Actually, I don't think that you are interpreting the chart correctly. As I understand Table 3 it says that over 1000 feet one should use 10 lbs. of pressure for 20 minutes or 15 lbs. for 15 minutes but NOT X lbs. for 10 minutes. http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/how/can_03/tomato_juice.html ------ I believe I'm now starting to understand the scientific explanation for my original question. Normally when you remove a small boiling pot from it's heat source it will stop boiling almost immediately because the temperature of the contents will quickly drop back below 212 degrees and since the atmospheric pressure stays the same it stops boiling quickly. As I am using the higher recommended pressure of 15 lbs, the temperature of the tomato juice is reaching 250 degrees. When I remove my pressure canner from the heat it's temperature drops quickly because it is a relatively small canner which doesn't need much water (1.5 qt) for pressure canning and there is much more air (~7 qt of air) than water. So the pressure canner cools and unlocks and I remove the jars. In the jar there is only a tiny, tiny amount of air which cools quickly and contracts creating the necessary vacuum to seal the lid. But the liquid is still very hot and now the pressure (vacuum) inside the jar is well below atmospheric pressure so the jar continues to boil even though the temperature of the liquid may drop below 212 degrees. - Steve

This is one of those borderline issues where you have to choose the odds you are comfortable with accepting. Technically, for full safety, they would need to be fully reprocessed because of the potential effects on the seals when they were brought back up to pressure. There is no way to know if the seals released allowing pressurized air into the jar and then re-sealed or not. The odds are at least 50/50 that the jars had already sealed and didn't release so are safe for shelf storage. But that can't be assured. The choice is your to make. If this was a high acid food I wouldn't be concerned personally. But it isn't. So if they were mine I would probably put new lids on them and reprocess them for the full time and I have made the same mistake and done just that in the past. They are more mushy but still fine to use. The alternative would be to refrigerate these jars and use them ASAP. Realistic if only a few jars. If a full batch few of us would want 7 quarts of them sitting in the fridge to use within the next week. It is a good example of why trying to do multiple things at the same time when canning just isn't a good idea. It really increases the chances of errors. Dave

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