A new “toy” & “venture” here :)

No shopping for us today. LOL! Richard & I don’t like shopping at the best of times so today is certainly a day to avoid the stores in our opinion!

A few weeks ago we had gone to buy some fencing posts from one of the local stores. As we walked towards the front desk to pay, my eye caught a sign that said 30% off so of course I had to look. There, on sale, were canning jars! They were getting rid of old stock and as you well know, jars do not go out of date so although these were considered “old” in the store that was not going to affect their usability. A couple weeks before that Richard & I had been discussing Pressure Canning. It was something neither of us had done but thought it was probably time we gave it a try as it would be nice to have meat here available just to open & reheat on a busy day and not have to take it out of the freezer. PLUS we were running out of freezer space. Beside the jars, was a Presto Pressure Canner, also at 30% off! Too good a deal to miss. The jars ended up being WAY cheaper than I could buy at a Thrift store not to mention they also came with lids & rings which thrift store ones do not & the Pressure Canner was also a very reasonable price so we came out with way more than we had gone in for but definitely got a bargain.

SO today was the day to put the new Pressure Cooker to the test for the first time. It can hold 7 qts (or 22 pts if I remember rightly.)

We had a pig to cut up. Still made sausage & bacon but all the rest of the meat (non fatty) got cut in chunks ready for the jars. I experimented with some seasoning & we ended up making 20qts of pork “stew.” Not sure what else to call it. You put it in the jar with no liquid as it will make its own during the cooking process, We added onion & some seasonings (salt, pepper, thyme, garlic powder) & pressure canned it for 90 mins per instructions.

Also made 28lbs sausage, put the bacon to brine in the cooler & then made 7 1/2 pts of lard. All the bones got cooked up for the dogs. It was a joint effort by Richard, Michelle & I to make it go so smoothly & get it all done in the time we did. In between we fed animals & I had to go pick up pig feed.

Enjoy your weekend,

Liz