So this is my second canning session in 2013. We did the stuff on the far right in January (Butter, bacon and on the bottom (quart jars) meatloaf. We have opened one of each and love them. The butter was proclaimed a little salty so next time we'll use unsalted butter, but I think we'll eventually mix salted and unsalted butter. Very creamy. Bacon was the "consistency of pulled pork" according to E, so that's good to know. I didn't bake it and I should have, just put it in a skillet and heated it all up. Got a good amount of bacon grease too. Storing fats was my biggest worry with food storage so this is all about that. The meatloaf we canned was very, very lean meat. Probably too lean. It was pretty good though, we had a hard time getting it out of the jar (it was a wide mouth; but I think pints with smooth sides might work better) but we kind of mushed it together, put some ketchup on top (next time brown gravy) and baked it and it was very good.
The second batch (February 10-11) was mostly veggies with some chicken. The chicken... well it looks awful and I think I will try one suggestion next time to brown it lightly first. And season it. It's more useful not seasoned so it will be more versatile, but yuck. I went and bought some canned chicken at WalMart because I thought it was better. We'll see when I get the chance to pop it open. So far the meatloaf was my favorite meat.
On the bottom shelf r-l squash, mixed veggies (some Swiss chard, which is basically spinach, it was beautiful before cooking, looks like seaweed canned. Great with cheese./Also some jars with mixed veggies. One cajun veg, cajuns cook with celery, bell pepper and onion. Since I have a lot of dehydrated onion I just canned the celery and peppers. I did a few of Chinese vegetables, I already have water chestnuts etc. it's just hard to find the Chinese vegetables and they are spendy, so I put in some cabbage, peppers, carrots, and celery. Gotta process all that in the pressure cooker for 10 lbs 90 minutes (I always go over on the pressure, because I CAN lol!) then carrots, chicken, and our two meatloaf we have left. On top is whole cinnamon kumquats, marmalade (oranges, lemon, grapefruit, pineapple, marachino cherries) and then apple pie filling, cake in a jar, our experimental cookie dough in a jar, and the bacon and butter. All together there are 72 in there now. SO I am making progress and learning a lot. Can't wait for something new in season so I can can some more! It's looking like more carrots and squash if I can again this month, and if I can get some more hamburger I'll do some more meatloaf.
Now I have G thinking about plans to make me more shelves for my jars:) What a good sport!
