There are tricks we pick up along the way as we make our way through life. I’m always interested in learning others skills. One of the tricks my mom taught me is when canning or drying leave yourself a place to cool off. Another words don’t heat your house up anymore than you need to. Ever sweated in a hot and humid house while canning all day? I have been canning and sweated in a hot humid house in the middle of summer a lot and it’s unpleasant. I was thinking about a couple of ways to reduce the effort in that process. I’ve not tried it but I was thinking of canning or at least boiling liquids for canning using an induction cooktop like this one https://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&page=1&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Ainduction%20cooktop . These cooktops are said to rapidly boil liquids. Faster boil means less heat generation. I would not be beyond setting up on the back porch so as not to heat my house up. Another trick I use is freeze it now and can it later when it’s cold outside. I like to heat the house at the same time i can so as not to waste fuel. Back to what my mom taught me which is run the dehydrator on the back porch not inside because why heat up your house? Solar dryer is even better if it works in your area because it’s free energy. In the summer when it’s hot outside I have made yogurt outside plenty of times. Yogurt needs 100 degree temperature for 6 hrs. Some things we know in life we need to unlearn because they are not the best way to do things. When I mow my orchard I use the mower to throw the grass towards the base of my trees. Installing a light over your garden fish pond so the bugs fall in the water as fish food when drawn to the light at night. Sure would make an aquponics system more efficient to not have the cost of fish food. My fish in my ponds eat for free. Efficient use of time and resources is challenging and we have lots of different tricks to accomplish things. I would love to read about some of your methods. Some people use roundup around larger fruit trees to reduce weeds rather than mow while others use wood chips. Those are the type of cost and effort savings tricks I think are very good to know! Work smarter not harder right?
This is the dryer I set outside to dry pears. Why would we run a dryer at over 100 degrees inside for 15 hrs and air conditioning at the same time?
Great post. When I actually get enough fruit my plans are to try drying some. I will definitely take your advice and put it on the screen porch. We started putting the crock-pot on the porch recently but for another reason. I love the food but I don’t want to smell it in the house all day while it cooks.
We use induction in the restaurant, they are pretty awesome, but hard to char a red pepper. My advice, put the AC on the kitchen a few hours before you start canning.
My understanding is that these induction units only work with magnetic pots. I.e. if a magnet won’t stick to your pot then an induction unit won’t heat its contents up. That rules out all the pots I use for canning. My sister uses a single stove burner (not induction) to do some of her canning outside to keep from heating the kitchen up. She boils things for hours.
To solve the ‘heat in the kitchen’, I can in the evening and come back in the morning when all has cooled down. I also can in batch sizes that fit the canners/jars that I’m using so it is not an all day process. E.g. 10# potatoes fills my pressure canner. Next night I do the next 10#. The ceiling fan helps too.