Today we got two more thermal quilts made – we (dd 12 and 13 and I) sewed the two temporary ones that were hanging for the last few days in the boys’ bedroom.  I think that I’ll do them bit by bit, one or two a day, and we’ll get them done in a timely way without stressing about having a big project hanging over our heads.

I did something for the first time today – I canned butter!  I bought lots of little (half pint) canning jars a while back because I got an amazing buy, but it’s really not a size that’s very useful for our family size.  They’re great for gifts, but honestly, as happy as I am to share what I make with others, I really don’t want to give away all my jars!  So they’ve been sitting on the shelf, taking up room.  And while I don’t mind storing things that I use, I don’t enjoy seeing things take up space that aren’t serving a purpose!

I was thinking about what would be a good use of these jars for my family, and it occurred to me that butter would be perfect.  I wouldn’t want to pack butter into anything bigger than a pint in any case, and it is nice to know that we have a decent quality fat on the shelf if we need it.  On Thursday I did my huge monthly shopping, and discovered when I got home and wanted to unpack that I really overestimated my freezer capacity! That meant that I needed to make room by moving some of the food out, either eating it or preserving it.  Since I bought a case of butter last month, I still had about fifteen pounds in the fridge, so I thought it was a good opportunity to see what canning butter would be like. 

I didn’t can all of it – I think I did about eight pounds, which filled sixteen small jars.  It was very simple to do; the hardest part for me was that since it was dairy, I couldn’t use my regular canner, which I use it for meat.  That technically wasn’t a problem, since butter is canned in a boiling water bath, and I didn’t need to use my pressure canner (though it’s so big that I could have done double the amount at one time that I actually did).  I used my big soup pot instead of the canner and improvised a rack for the bottom with a cloth diaper (to keep the jars off the bottom of the pot).  The biggest problem was that the tools I use are all set aside for meat preparation (tools such as a funnel to pour the food neatly into the jar, and a jar lifter), and it made it a little messier to can everything without those.  I’m going to have to buy another set of canning tools (fortunately a set is inexpensive) so that I’ll have one for dairy and one for meat.  And now I need to figure out how to organize and mark the jars so it will be very obvious which are for which – until now, they’ve all been deemed meat. 

I got the directions for canning butter from Jackie Clay, who I think is the most amazing and knowledgeable canner around!  She writes a column for Backwoods Home magazine, which I encountered online when I was doing a search for canning instructions for something specific.  She understands the reason for each step of the canning process, bacteria formation, etc, and answers canning queries that you won’t find answers to anywhere else.   She’s amazingly knowledgeable about lots of other homesteading related things, too – it seems like she knows how to do everything! 

Tomorrow I’m going to look for more things in the freezer to can to make more room – I know I have some chili in there – because I’ll be getting meat on Wednesday and will need a place for it.  And Tuesday I’m blessed to be receiving a huge amount of freshly made vegetable soup (and when I say huge amount, I really mean huge – 10 gallons) that I’ve estimated will take me 2 1/2 days of nonstop canning to process.  It’s not for the happiest reason that it’s suddenly available for us – someone dh knows opened a restaurant a year ago that they’ve suddenly decided to close because it’s not doing well in the current economy.  But because he and his wife really like our family, they offered us the food supplies (the soup and meat) that they aren’t going to transfer to their other restaurant.  I jokingly told my husband that it pays to have good kids, because this couple was so taken with them that I think that’s the real reason we made a big enough impression on them for them to think of us at this busy time.

So I’ll be busy canning this week, and yes, it is definitely work to do all of this.  I can’t say canning is effortless, though most of the time is spent waiting, not in actual hands on work.  It’s kind of like making bread- when the main effort is to mix the dough and stick it in a pan, but you spend most of the time waiting for it to rise and then bake.  But it’s worth it to me to spend the time canning – it’s already helped to make our food dollars go further and put us in a position to benefit from food we otherwise couldn’t have used for lack of storage space, like all that fruit we picked for free, or like when we were given eight fresh bakery challahs that I only had room for in my freezer because it wasn’t full of all the stuff I used to keep in it.   And a number of times having canned food on the shelf has simplified dinner at the end of a busy day because all I’ve had to do is bring out a couple jars of something and heat it, and voila! – within ten minutes, a hot and nutritious dinner was ready.  My own tasty and nutritious fast food.  🙂

Avivah