Canning Beans

I know that not everyone wants to can/preserve food. I don't really understand the reasons why . . nor do I need to understand the reasons why . . we're all ok doing things the way we want and no one has to explain anything to anyone.

I don't do it for cost savings, but on most things, there is a big cost savings. I suppose the main reason I do it is because I've done it my entire life. I think it all tastes so much better than anything storebought canned. But, also, I have meat canned in jars. I think I mentioned that the other day I opened a jar of canned beef chunks. There were potatoes and carrots in the jar. I added corn and a can of cannellini beans, a bit more seasoning and some beef broth and it turned into a pot of stew that was delicious.

Hopefully Vince is done picking raspberries so before I have to start dealing with tomatoes, potatoes and okra from the garden, I need to can more beans.

For anyone who has thought about canning but never took the plunge, I think canning dried beans alone makes it worth learning to can and buy the equipment. Besides the home canned ones tasting so much better, I did a little price comparison.

At our Walmart, one pound of dry beans is $1.46. At Azure, it's right at $1.11/pound counting the freight charges if I buy 25 pounds.

Five pounds of dry beans will produce 14 pints of ready to eat cooked, canned beans so that makes each jar a bit less than .40/jar. If using the Walmart dry beans, that makes each jar about .52/jar. If I go to Walmart and buy Bush's canned garbanzo beans, it's $1.48/can. If I buy the Great Value can, it's .86/can.

I can beans using the overnight soak method. I follow Abbey Verigin on YouTube and she does a lot of canning. Her method, shown in this video is pretty much the same one I use. Instead of boiling the beans for 30 minutes, I boil them for 20 minutes. That way, I feel like they're nice and tender and not mushy. There is a method, and Abbey mentions it where you do not soak or boil your beans. That is not an approved canning method and that doesn't bother me. I've used that method before but I find that the beans are never quite as tender as I like for them to be.

My big All American canner will hold 19 pints. My smaller All American canner will hold 10 pints. When I'm canning beans, I will have both of them going.

I will wash and soak all the beans the night before. The next morning I'll take two pots - say the pinto beans and cannellini beans. Rinse them and get them on to boil for 20 minutes. Then I'll get them into jars and in the canner. The pints have to process for 75 minutes. By the time the canner comes up to pressure, cooks, then cools down, I count on each load taking 2-1/2 - 3 hours. I've canned enough and the All American canners are pretty consistent so I will sit down and stitch with the door to the basement garage open so I can hear if the canners stop "jiggling". After about 2 hours, I'll go upstairs and get another two pots of beans going. By the time the canners downstairs are ready to be emptied and re-loaded, I'll have 28 more pints of beans ready to be canned. I do that one last time and that gives us 84 pints of beans on the shelf, ready to pop open, heat and eat. We probably eat 5 jars of beans each week. Since we have a few jars of beans left, and we'll use those before we start using the newly canned beans, I won't have to think about canning beans again until at least October and, by then, everything except maybe the okra should be finished.

I do not have open shelves for storing my canned foods so I store the jars in their original boxes. This week, I'll be canning black beans, cannellini beans, garbanzo beans, pinto beans, lima beans and last but they're my very favorite - Anasazi beans. Since I will have six types of beans, I will put two jars of each per box so when I grab a box, I will heat up whatever I grab and that way, we won't use up one kind and end up with all of another can left.

Then, in a week or two, I'll make 28 pints of baked beans and that will likely be enough for close to a year.

Garbanzo Bean Sandwich

 I've been seeing recipes for Garbanzo Bean Salad for sandwiches and I wanted to try it. We use a lot of garbanzo beans but I've never made a salad with them. It's much like tuna salad.

I pretty much just combined what I had remembered seeing, leaving out some items I didn't want (capers and onion). 

This is what I did:  Drained and rinsed a jar of canned garbanzo beans, put about 3/4 of them in a chopper, added a tsp. lemon juice, a bit of Tabasco sauce, and a tablespoon of dill pickle brine. Then I dumped all that into a bowl, added 2 chopped boiled eggs, a bit of salt, about 1/3 c. chopped celery, about 1/3 cup chopped dill pickles, 1/2 tsp. smoked paprika and stirred in enough mayo to make it all stay together.

It was delicious and Vince loved it. I love tuna salad but I may have loved the garbanzo bean salad better.

One pint jar of beans made enough for the two of us to have sandwiches with plenty of salad on them. I added spinach and sliced tomatoes to the salads. There's enough left over for us to do it again.

Insects and Other Unwanted Varmits

 I'm very thankful that, at least for now, we don't have to depend on what we grow to survive.

We had several raspberries I've been watching and had planned on picking them today. I went out this morning, birds flew out of the raspberry vines and the almost red raspberries were gone. I've now wrapped that whole trellis area in bird cloth. It was windy and that stuff was blowing everywhere and getting caught on the raspberry vines so I'm sure I haven't outsmarted the birds but we'll see.

Next, until Vince found the base for the compost barrel, I had been digging holes in a bed I wasn't using and burying veggie scraps - except for potato peelings because I learned my lesson about that - potatoes growing in every raised bad! Then when I needed to refresh a bed, I would get the soil out of the bed where the scraps had been composting. 

Yesterday I walked down the pepper bed and . . why is squash growing in the pepper bed? Yep - came from the compost bed.

I try to be so careful not to get ANY seeds in that bed but a few weeks ago I had cooked a butternut squash and had the seeds sitting on a saucer to dry out and clean so I could plant some of them and apparently, they ended up in the compost bucket and got planted in the pepper bed.

I dug up a whole clump of them, divided them into three clumps, planted them in a bed that has all volunteer plants from last year. They should be fine there. 

Last and probably most important - yesterday I asked Vince if we could PLEASE stay home all day today and tomorrow. He said yes - not going anywhere. Then he sent me this video last night We are having a heck of a battle with mosquitoes. I got online and tried to order the mosquito bits from Walmart - out of stock. Can't even be ordered. Home Depot and Tractor Supply both had them and both were the same price and both were cheaper than Walmart. I asked Vince . . Can we please go to Tractor Supply? Thankfully it's on our end of town so we went there and got those. We didn't have any colored buckets so Vince bought 5 buckets. Tractor Supply didn't have red lids so he bought red spray paint and came home and painted them. I have the yard debris and mosquito bits and water in the three buckets and they're set out around the yard. 

I ended up ordering the Barricor from Walmart so it should be here sometime next week. It's all out war on the mosquitoes!

Next up  . . war on the squash bugs!  :)

Rejoice Evermore Progress

There's still Saturday and Sunday for me to work on Rejoice Evermore before switching over to Prairie Life Sampler on Monday. What I've done this week is work on that band at the top and fill in at last part of the flowers in the top part of the border.

Somewhere in this chart, there are Algerian Eyelets, Smyrna Crosses and Satin Stitches. When I was working on this probably a year or more ago, I started the satin stitches beneath the big flower on the right and I thought they looked awful but now, I'm thinking they don't look so bad. I'm not sure I've ever done Algerian Eyelets or Smyrna Crosses so we'll see how that goes.

Saturday and Sunday I will finish what needs to be done in the band above the satin stitches, then work on the stitching between those two horizontal lines above the Rejoice Evermore verse.

I'm also not sure I've ever stitched 1 over 1 but the verse is stitched that way. It wasn't horrible but it was a bit tedious on 40 count linen.

A Good Day at Doggie School

I probably haven't said much on here about Cooper's classes.  He's the sweetest little guy - almost three years old, so a bit past the age for "puppy classes" but a friend in Nevada, MO had told me about her dog that was afraid of everything and a trainer in Nevada had helped her dog so much. I contacted the trainer and we got Cooper enrolled in classes. Today he finished his fourth class. Two more to go. He has come so far but I don't think the trainer had expected things to go so slowly and she's probably going to suggest more classes but . . it's a bit over an hour there and a bit over an hour back and an hour there twice a week. With the garden, I'm not sure I can do it.

Honestly, I think I learned more than Cooper has. Apparently Cooper needs more self-confidence and I'm always doing things for him and shielding him from the experiences he might learn from . . very nicely, she said (I think) that I need to stop being a mother hen.

Today was Class 4 and this was the first class where he hasn't seriously tried to bite her.  The first class, I kept him back and didn't let him get too close to her. She kept telling me not to pull back on the leash when he got too close but she didn't believe he would bite her. I was pretty sure he would. The second class, he lunged at her and had I not yanked back on the leash, he would have bit her and she thanked me for keeping the leash tight. At the end of that class, she asked how I felt about using a muzzle. I told her I would be a lot calmer if he was wearing a muzzle. She showed me the kind to order - he can eat and drink through it and he can pant so I ordered one . . actually I had to order two because even though I measured, the first one was too big.

Class #3 he had his muzzle on but when she got too close, he flipped out, barking and screaming like she was killing him (she hadn't touched him). You may remember that he did that once at the vet - he started screaming when the vet walked into the room before she ever touched him. Class #3 he was on a leash with a muzzle so she took him farther from us, sat down on the floor. He backed as far away from her as he could with his leash, growled every time she made the smallest move, screamed if he thought she was coming close to him. After about half an hour of that, he moved over closer to her and before class was over, he crawled up on her lap and let her pet him.

The worst thing he did at Class #3 - the trainer had a small-ish stuffed dog. She got him down to show me how I could put food through the front of the muzzle and he would stick his nose right in and I wouldn't have to fight him to get the muzzle on. As soon as she sat that dog on the floor, Cooper attacked the dog - seriously attacked the stuffed dog!

We've been taking him out in public, far away from people and other dogs but he can see them and today he didn't growl, didn't bark at her; didn't try to bite her.

Near the end of class, she got the stuffed dog out again and put it towards the end of the room. We were instructed to walk him towards the dog, pay attention to his body language and when he tensed up, we would turn and walk away from the dog. We did that several times and then she moved the dog so we would walk just a bit closer and he never reacted to the dog. She was teaching us to read his body language and remove him from situations that made him uncomfortable before he over reacted.

She had one of those tunnels and she wanted Vince to get at one end and I would get at the other and we were to see if he would run through the tunnel. She didn't think he would but wanted to see how he reacted. He ran right through it . . THREE times! Then she had a bar kinda like jumping hurdles but for a dachshund, it was barely off the floor. She wanted us to use food to see if he would jump over the bar. He did!

Today was a great day. Next week, instead of going on Tuesday and Friday, we're going to take more "field trips" with him, expose him to more and see her on Friday.

He did so much better today and we were so happy with his progress.

WIPS I'll Work on Through June

 A few days ago a reader left a comment that when I work on G. Leger again, she'll get hers out and work on it with me. Thanks Barbara! When y'all comment about my stitching (or lack of stitching!), it inspires me to do better!

I sat down and made a list of the projects I'll work on through June so if you see any of these that you would like to start or pull yours out and work on, please do it and let me know that you're doing it.

Now that I'm stitching on one project for a week, starting each Monday with a different project, these are the ones on the radar (and on my calendar in red ink!) for the next 7 Mondays (because June has 5 Mondays).

May 18 - Prairie Life Sampler (Heartstring Samplery)
May 25 - Autumn Moon (Plum Street)
June 1 - G. Leger (Reflets de Soie)
June 8 - Winter Rose Manor (Brenda Gervais)
June 15 - Noel Sampler (Brenda Gervais)
June 22 - New Year Sampler (Owl Forest Embroidery) Etsy - pdf
June 29 - The Lord's Prayer (Lila's Studio)

I've linked all to 123 Stitch or to Brenda Gervais' website because I don't think 123 Stitch carries all of her charts. Some of these - if you prefer a PDF, The Lord's Prayer and Prairie Life Sampler can be found on the designers' websites or on their Etsy sites.

With our mail being . . I want to be kind . . not so great, and since I stitch using the Markup app and have to make a PDF anyway, I much prefer to order the PDF vs. the paper chart and waiting/hoping it gets here.

More Jam!

 Dearest Vince! Please do not pick any more strawberries! 

Seriously, I have never had strawberries this good and I wouldn't mind if he picked some every day but maybe just enough to eat. I can't think of anything else I could can with strawberries!

The first thing I made was strawberry syrup and I think I made about 24 pints of that. Then Vince picked more strawberries and I made Strawberry Rhubarb Jam. I think I made about 18 half pints. Can't remember and am too tired to go upstairs and look. This morning, he picked more strawberries! We had to take Cooper to Nevada for his "school". We left here about 2 and got home about 5. I had hulled and sliced the strawberries before we left so I immediately started making jam when we got home. I made two batches . . well three really. I made 4 pints and 8 half pints of more strawberry rhubarb jam and I made two pots of strawberry jalapeno jam. That's my favorite! I made 8 pints and 1 half pint of that one. So . . for today's jam making, I made the equivalent of 33 half pints of jam. I can't wait to have toast with the strawberry jalapeno jam!!

Tomorrow I sit and stitch all day with Debbie. I always look so forward to spending time with her and being able to sit and stitch without any interruptions! 

Oh, and the whole l reason for making this post:  A reader had left a comment asking for my strawberry rhubarb jam recipe. This is the recipe I use. I like it because it doesn't call for added pectin. When using pectin, I've always heard you shouldn't double the recipe. I wanted to double or triple this recipe so I chopped my strawberries, measured them out, then decided how much rhubarb I needed. If you're buying rhubarb and it's expensive, I'm sure you could cut back on it and maybe add more strawberries. The first batch of jam I made, I used 15 cups of chopped rhubarb. It helps that I have it growing in the back yard.

When I made the strawberry jalapeno jam, I wanted to double it so I made two separate batches instead of actually doubling it since it uses pectin.

Who knows . . maybe you can double the recipe even if there's pectin. I've always heard you shouldn't so I don't.