Show us your canned produce

Looks good, John. Since they were early picked Gold Rush, were they pretty tart?

After making “smoky” apple butter, I doubt my wife will ever let me cook anything again…

I’ve burned my fair share of pots and what works best for me is to boil a little hydrogen peroxide in the bottom of the pot and then let it sit overnight.

They were about like mild granny smith, extra sugar usually makes everything alright. This stuff is delicious. Smokey Apple Butter? You cooked them with hickory or something?

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Yeah, that is wild stuff. My family lives about 50 miles from the epicenter of that one. But, oddly enough they are in Dallas this weekend visiting. I called my sister this morning to check on them, and she said she felt it down there in Texas.

They’ve had a lot of quakes in Oklahoma over the last 10-15 years, but I think this was the strongest one in a while. We never had them there when I was growing up. I’m inclined to think all that fracking they’ve done there might have something to do with it.

Mrs Dood made a little apple pie for me out of those Honeycrisps we got last week. The pie seemed a bit too sweet, I don’t know if it was the apples or if she used a little too much sugar. They held up well in this pie, better than those sorry ones we used last time.

No, our apple butter got that ‘smoky’ flavor after I let it burn a bit. We went ahead and canned it, but I haven’t tried any yet. Read back about 40 posts and you’ll see what happened.

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Well the beeeeautiful produce in glass jars shown in this post can wind up a glassy mess on the floor without due consideration of this kind of potential catastrophe, (regardless of the cause or scapegoat du jour), For example, a few simple bungee cords could secure @cousinfloyd 's nice pantry

I’ll set my iPhone and put it on me if I leave something on in the kitchen, since I can a lot.

.[quote=“hoosierbanana, post:83, topic:6946”]
I’ve burned my fair share of pots and what works best for me
[/quote]
…I fill the ceramic pot with water to cover the burned section and put a dishwashing packet in the water and cover. After a few days I come back with a mild scrubee to loose what was dissolved and if that doesn’t get it all I repeat. Options are limited with ceramics since you don’t want to mar the finish. I rescued a Dutch oven and a crock pot this way and they look almost new.

Sweet peppers canned in tomato juice. It will be a taste of summer in winter months.

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Maria, these look beautiful. Did you roast the skins? So how will you use these?

I can mine in a vinegar brine. Looks like this…

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@subdood_ky_z6b ,
We experienced our first earthquake in this part of Kansas just the other day. It shook me pretty good. It felt like a wild animal went under the furniture!

Yeah, I would imagine you felt it. I don’t know where in Kansas you’re at, but you were prob within a couple hundred miles of the epicenter. It was a 5.6 centered just northwest of Tulsa, close to where I grew up. My sister, who still lives in that area with our Mom, said she felt it down in Dallas, over 250mi away. They were down there visiting.

Like I told @JustAnne4, I don’t recall any quakes growing up there; this is something of a new phenomenon for Okies. While I was in Kansas City for two years in tech school, I didn’t recall going through any there, either.

Southwest Missouri, in that area is the New Madrid fault line. That is supposed to be a real volatile seismic area. There was like a 8 mag quake there in the early 1800’s, which would be devastating nowadays. They have small quakes in that area still, but geologists fear some big ones in the future.

I’ve only experienced a few in my life, once while out in San Diego (no surprise there), one while living in TX, and one up here many years ago. It is a weird sensation, for sure.

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I use tomato juice because I still have some tomatoes. When I have plenty of tomatoes I even can cucumbers in tomato juice. I use 2 tablespoons of lemon juice per qt jar for the extra acidity. Tomato juice has an extra bonus of being drinken after the peppers are eaten. I pack row peppers in the jars and they taste almost like row ones in the winter.

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That part of Missouri has tons of underground rivers and limestone caves. I’ve ran across some serious sink holes there where I can hear the river flowing underground. An earthquake in that area could get ugly if those underground rivers and caves started caving in. There is a lot of flint in that area on top of the ground which I always found odd. Seems like something significant has happened there before. There are hundreds of arrowheads all over there and it did make me wonder why all those years ago that civilization left.

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Yeah, every time we drive thru the Ozarks on the way home, you see all the signs to visit ‘So and So Caverns’. We live close to a state park in NE KY that features caves, and there are several close by. We have good water veins running under the farm percolating thru the limestone. Some creeks around here seem to start from such springs.

Regarding the big New Madrid quake, they said that the Mississippi appeared to flow backwards. That would’ve been freaky to see. Here is an interesting link to that event:

http://www.showme.net/~fkeller/quake/mississippi_river_ran_backward.htm

I had an aunt and uncle live in NE Arkansas close to the MO line for many years, and they said they would have little quakes every once in a while.

Maybe the Native Americans years ago experienced a big quake and decided to leave the area. Right before we cross the OH and MS rivers there by Cairo, IL, you pass a sign for a burial mounds site at Wickliffe, KY. This site mentions that they lived there for many years, but abandoned the area in the1300’s. Could it been a quake? Idk.

http://parks.ky.gov/parks/historicsites/wickliffe-mounds/history.aspx

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Both those articles were good, thanks for the links! I heard of the mounds before.
I have a cottage on a river, so found the other article interesting too. Luckily no fault lines by me![quote=“subdood_ky_z6b, post:94, topic:6946”]
the Ozarks
[/quote]

My sister-in-law lives there, only been there once. My wife’s former employer was based in Louisville. My wife had to go there from time to time. She bought our nephew in the Ozarks a Louisville slugger with his name on it, pretty cool!

OK, back to the subject I canned 6 quarts of beans. It’s a spicy green bean recipe in apple cider vinegar. I added half a dried red chili pepper, a couple garlic gloves (huge hardnecks from the garden) I managed to use up all the beans! Well until tomorrow! Pole beans rock! Here are the last three.
I used the new reusable tops, and I’m not sure of them? So I’m refrigerating this anyway. Until I know more about these tops. In almost pure vinegar, so should be good for some time.

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These sound like my Dilly Beans. Yummy side with many kinds of meals. I use 4.5 c water to 1.5 c distilled white vinegar along with salt, cayenne and garlic. The pH of mine was 3.7
I don’t have the tattler lids but those I follow that use them seem pleased with them. I haven’t read where their failure rate is any worse than the regular rubber lids. Can you tap them same as regular lids to tell if they’re sealed? Or do they have another way to tell if the seal is good?
For my canning preferences, I like when beans come in all at once so I use the bush beans.

So far it appears not, I don’t seem to have any instructions or info besides what’s on the box. I will look more into it, and open one to see too.
I like pole beans as I don’t have the room for bush, and the fact they produce till frost. Only a few varieties produce well for me. Some do not. The ones that do, produce about 10-15 pounds per plant.(a couple hundred beans).

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T[quote=“JustAnne4, post:97, topic:6946”]
The pH of mine was 3.7
[/quote]

Good to know, I can’t find my pH meter and strips! Neither, I must have put them somewhere not to lose them!:blush: I put 1.5 cups of apple vinegar (same acid as white) to 1 cup water. So pH is even lower.

The only way to tell is when you lift them, if seal is broken they come right off. I’m only going to use them as lids on jars already opened and being consumed from now on. At most just use on my jars and not ones I plan to give away. I like the traditional popping lids, and will stick with that. No doubt about a broken seal there.

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Mrs Dood went down to the cellar yesterday to do an inventory of our stock that we’ve canned over the last three years of canning. I’m not going to bore y’all with all we have, but we do have about 50qt of chicken, 15qt of blackberries, 52qt of various green beans (mostly half-runners), 21qt of various pickle products, 21qt of tomatoes, 6qt of salsa, and 30qt of apples. There are other items, like other fruit, various berry jams, peppers, etc.

We’re going to the orchard this week and she wants to can some more apples of different varieties. I like apples, but I don’t want to can too much of them. They’re nice to have, but you can’t live off them!

I just don’t know if I could trust those Tattler lids. I know they’re supposed to be reusable, but idk, I think I’ll just spend the extra money on new lids. How much does a box of dozen cost? I don’t think I’ve seen them around here.

It’s not to say regular lids are infallible either. We’ve found that the known name brand lids like Ball or Kerr are better than some of the lesser known brands. Some of those cheap ones wouldn’t seal all the time out if the canner.