Are you adding to your storage daily or weekly?

So in my last post I told you of my new friend who has a fantastic idea to add atleast one canned item to your pantry/food storage everyday until the end of the year. Granted I know you don't go to the grocery daily, so yes you can pick up more than one can at a time.  BUT, I am unable to drive right now, so I have been at home.  I also am not supposed to do much, so I have been "helping" the girls build their skills with canning.

NO I am not doing it. I have been directing. And they get really ticked off at me and say I am bossy. But I informed them that when canning, if you don't follow proper food handling you CAN kill someone. So they shushed up. So first off let me say, I am most likely the only one you have met that has their canner going ON Thanksgiving day! What do I can?? Turkey. We don't like leftover turkey very much. BUT we love canned poultry. It is so versatile, you can make gravy with it, soup, casseroles, taco meat, sandwiches.. LOVE IT!!

BUT this year I didn't cook the bird, and there wasn't enough meat to can. BUT I was given the bones!!!! HURRAH, and I just happened to also have chicken bones ready to do as well. So I was only up for a few minutes and had hubby get the 5qt crocks out for me. Then I put the turkey bones in one and in the other the chicken bones. OH, and ALL of these bones had been previously cooked. I don't use raw bones, I don't like the flavor, previously baked bones (with the meat, like for dinner) have much better flavor.
OK, so put bones in crock pot. Then I added a shredded carrot to both CP. I added about a 1/4 to 1/2 cup dehydrated onion (home dehydrated!!), I didn't have fresh. I then added 3 smashed cloves of garlic, 1 bayleaf and 1 TBS canning salt to each CP. Then I covered the bones with cold water, put the lids on, set the CPs to HIGH and went and layed down. I let these cook from 8:30am until 7:00pm. 
Then I strained the broth, added boiling water to bring the level up to wear the lid sits on CP. I skimmed the fat off the top a couple times. Made sure the water level was high enough.
 Next I filled each quart jar and left a 1-inch headspace. Wiped each rim with a vinegar washcloth to make sure no grease on rim.  Then I placed lids and rings and tightened to finger tight. Put in my pressure canners and processed for 25 minutes at 10-pounds pressure.

**Please check your altitude and make sure you are using the right amount of pressure. We are at sea level, so only need 10-pounds here.

 What else have we canned?? Well in the last week we have done two batches of chicken stock, 1 batch of turkey stock, apple sauce, and pumpkin. Now you can not safely do pumpkin puree, so we did pumpkin chunks, they will be easy enough to puree when we use them.

And yes I do use two canners at once sometimes. 

I use both ball/kerr canning lids and or Tattler reuseable lids. Tattlers do NOT make the ping sound (bummer, because the PING makes me smile and sometimes giggle).  BUT I still love them. I use them for stuff I won't be giving away. I use the ball/kerr lids for things I might send to my missionary, or give away to family and friends.



One of the pretty apples..



Actually all of them were pretty.

 BTW, my girls now HATE apples.  Before I got sick, we had picked part of one apple tree and I made apple butter.. that was in October, but it hadn't frosted yet so we waited to pick more. Hubby and baby girl picked all of the orchard and we had a nice mess of apples to can after a light frost around the 1st week of November. BUT being I couldn't be up for long, I had them all out on the back deck in bags, waiting.. very patiently I might add. Out of all 4 bushels of apples, we only had 2 individual apples that went bad!! THat is it!!  WE thought for sure we might lose half of them. AND so you know, the chickens were not appreciative of the peelings. Dorks.


Apples in crock pot with splash of lemon juice.

We used the crockpots to make the apple butter. Peel, quarter and seed apples, place in CP. Cook onLOW all day, stir (they disintegrated), or chop in food processor, put in CP and cook on LOW all day. I did NOT add sugar, but I did add a little cinnamon to a couple batches. Then I processed like it says to in the BALL canning book. I did mine in pints. 

Apples cooking down in a crockpot with cinnamon sticks.  I preferred ground cinnamon.

 OH, so yes I have been adding to my food storage. And today we will be doing something new.. I will put that in a separate post, but all I will say is I love the Canning Granny.

Don't forget to LABEL your jars. Either on the glass or on the lid with a SHARPIE!!  I love sharpies!