2016 Canned food tally
I think I'm finished with canning for the year. I think!I have to make a habit of tracking my annual canning. I'm curious to know what the ideal #s are for two people for one year.
- 6 pts Plumsauce
- 24 pts "V8", or, attempted tomato sauce that came out as juice, and after that much work, I canned it anyway. We drink a fair amount of V8, so that's a few we won't purchase
- 24 pts Tomato sauce (that did work)
- 21 pts Grape or Cherry tomatoes
- 6 pts Pickles
- 21 pts Pears
- 36 pts Applesauce
- 78 pts Peaches
- 6 halfpts pickled garlic
- 41 qts Tomato "soup" - just the tomato part of the soup, aka tomatoes between juice and sauce - they will make many good (tomato basil, cream of tomato, chili, did I mention tomato basil?) soups and stews.
- 46 more pts Applesauce
I hoped to do more "convenience foods", like ready to eat soups. I also hoped to have most of a month to focus on preserving, but it turned out the opposite. It was a very busy Sep/Oct: I had to fit preserving in at the end of workdays and it was a weary, onerous task.That's a total of 309 jars; 42 canner batches (! - now I'm kind of impressing myself).I canned no pumpkin this year, because somehow I have quite a bit left over from 2015, and I think I did far fewer apples, because it was an awful apple year. Edit-I purchased apples, and canned two more bushels.
Trash the rack!
This is the canning game-changer of the year - a silicone canning mat. Not only does it make everything quieter (no rattling), wayyyy less frustrating (those wire lifting racks are simply awful), but the water stays clear (no rusty lifting rack rusting into the water), AND nine pints fit in the canner with this mat, as opposed to seven!
Available at Lee Valley Tools