I used to love canning, though I have really gotten away from it in the recent 15 years due to work schedules, moving several times and lack of garden space. Later it evolved into just pickles and jams. My grandmother canned everything and taught me along the way, salmon, veg, soups,fruit, jams, pickles etc... I am a woman not to be messed with if I am able to get my hands on pickled beets or pickled herring!!

The chili sauce sounds delicious... will you post the recipe?

We are back in our new locale ~ permanently now... it changes things, now we can start acquiring equipment again that we had tired of toting around move after move. When prepping I go back in my mind to the many things my grandma taught me through the years. Though she eventually lived in a town and had many conveniences at her fingertips, many of her ways came from years of living in remote camps or on floathouses... she was all about recycle , put away, salvage, grow and repair...

I am hoping to buy a dehydrator next month, still loading the pantry and b.o.b before I make other purchases... I scan the ads already just in case one comes on sale before then. Blackberries are wild and crazily abundant here and I would love to can jam next season and dehydrate berries... I love access to free fruit!

I love canning as well 🙂

At the moment our basement canning shelves contain: Peaches and Pears from the BC Okanagan, Fruit Cocktail, Applesauce, Mango Chutney, Dill Pickles, Dilly Beans, Pickled Beets, Sweet Pickle Relish, Vegetable Antipasto, Herbed Green Beans, Split Pea with Bacon soup, Vegetable Beef soup, Chili, Hamburger, Chicken, Pork, Stew Beef, Baked Beans, Plain beans (pinto, red kidney, white navy, black)--all organic, 'cause that's how our family rolls. I just did up some more hamburger and need to do more as well as more chicken next time I go meat shopping.

I love canning as well 🙂

At the moment our basement canning shelves contain: Peaches and Pears from the BC Okanagan, Fruit Cocktail, Applesauce, Mango Chutney, Dill Pickles, Dilly Beans, Pickled Beets, Sweet Pickle Relish, Vegetable Antipasto, Herbed Green Beans, Split Pea with Bacon soup, Vegetable Beef soup, Chili, Hamburger, Chicken, Pork, Stew Beef, Baked Beans, Plain beans (pinto, red kidney, white navy, black)--all organic, 'cause that's how our family rolls. I just did up some more hamburger and need to do more as well as more chicken next time I go meat shopping.

Oh YUMMY!!! I think I love you 😀 Isn't canning great!

Here's my list:
38 - 1L jars of dill pickles
27 - 500ml jars of bread and butter
30 - 250 ml jars of relish
17 - 236ml jars of apple butter
11 - 1L jars of peaches
19 - 500ml jars of chili sauce
5 - 500ml jars of applesauce
16 - 250ml jars of applesauce
6 - 500ml jars of hamburger
10 - 500ml jars of tomato sauce
18 - 500ml jars of icicle pickles
13 - 250ml jars of BBQ sauce
210 jars total

Oh, you want me to count them 😉

Ok:

35 quarts/litres peaches (I have both older and newer size jars and they're all mixed up together)
28 quarts/litres pears
12 pints Fruit Cocktail
6 quarts/litres Applesauce
48 half-pints (jam jars) jam (strawberry-rhubarb, raspberry-blackberry, strawberry, cherry, nectarine)
12 half-pints (jam jars) Mango Chutney
11 quarts/litres Dill Pickles
8 pints Dilly Beans
8 pints Pickled Beets
9 half-pints (jam jars) Sweet Pickle Relish
10 half-pints (jam jars) plus 3 pints Vegetable Antipasto
8 pints Herbed Green Beans
6 pints Split Pea with Bacon soup
7 pints Vegetable Beef soup
6 pints Chili
6 pints Hamburger
4 pints Chicken
7 pints Pork
8 pints Stew Beef
6 pints Baked Beans
12 pints Plain beans (pinto, red kidney, white navy, black)

Counting it all up it looks like I could stock up more Stew Beef and Pork as well as the Hamburger and Chicken--variety is good, and I love home-canned meats for quick easy dinners 🙂

Curious, what are Icicle Pickles? My family prefers Dill Pickles, but occasionally I'll make up a batch of sweet Bread & Butter pickles because I like them 🙂

I love home canned meat as well. I haven't done chicken yet but I will need too soon - the freezer has reached max capacity!

Icicle pickes are sweet pickles done in spears. My mom used to make them so I did them for old times sake but I actually like bread and butter or dill better.

I wrote about my canning experience this summer with a friend and my daughter on my blog: http://adventures-in-country-living.blogspot.com/2011/08/trip-down-memory-lane-canning.html

I love canning and the feeling you get of looking at all those lovely colored jars on the shelves. I didn't really want to put them away in the basement but I was running out of room everywhere 😆
You have a very impressive list and I bet they look beautiful!! Cookstoves and canning make my heart happy! 😀

Your blog is lovely, I think we have a lot in common from the couple of posts I read! 🙂 I too love lists and organizing and looking at all the pretty jars lined up.

All of my canned food (other than the meats and beans) lives on two metal "canning rack" shelves in our basement guest bedroom. The meats and beans live in the kitchen cupboard because we use them so often--I can these things all year round, but go nuts with the more seasonal veggies and fruits during the summer and early fall.

This year I hope to add citrus to my canning in the next couple of months when the new citrus crops come into the stores--marmalades, canned oranges and grapefruit--one recipe in a book I have is for honeyed grapefruit that sounds yummy, maybe even a jar of preserved lemons for fun and to try some north African dishes. I just found a recipe for an orange cranberry conserve that also sounds yummy, so I plan to try this to add to Christmas dinner.

I grew up with a Mom and two Grandmas who canned out of necessity--big gardens, no electric for my grandparents in the early years--so it's always been a natural thing to do for me. I started on my own when I made baby food for my kids and also canned simple things like peaches and tomato sauce. It's just snowballed over the years as I began gardening and learned how to make pickles and jams. Pressure canning has added a wonderful dimension to our family life because it makes quick dinners so simple, my Mom passed down her 1970s Presto to me about 10 years ago and I was slow to get started but have been really enjoying it for the past few years. I picked up another second-hand that is a 12 quart (Mom's is an 18L) that I use more for pressure cooking, but it is sometimes so great to have more than one canner going at a time.

vanislemom asked me to post my recipe for ketchup in another thread and I will do that but first I thought I would explain why I can and how I got to this point.

I've always been interested in food, cooking, pioneers and stories of WW2 which made food storage an easy decision for me.

For people just starting the prepping journey it is probably best to get a few months of commercial - from-the-grocery-store food storage under your belt before starting to can however after that I think it is a VERY valuable and worthwhile skill to have. Commercially canned food is great to a point but home canned has many benefits in health and self-sufficiency. I will not say at the beginning that home canning is cheaper because with the equipment required, tools, glass jars - not to mention the food - I have my doubts whether you will save tons - AT THE BEGIINNING. But I still think it's worth it!

I lived in a small home in a small city for 20 years and there is where I began my canning obession 😉 I had to buy most of the produce because I didn't have much of a garden but I was determined to LEARN HOW TO CAN! and I did. I made many huge messes and a few mistakes but now I am very confident that I could can just about anything. I consider all of that the cost of my education.

Right in the middle of an emergency I may have to live without ketchup (if I run out!) however I know how to make it when times are good.

Everyone has to start somewhere! and for me canning is where I am at on the road. My philosophy may differ from yours but I don't see living in a city as an ideal situation for preppers. My goal was to get out and become as self sufficient as we could be. This year with a huge garden I am beginning to see the cost benefit of canning. Today I canned ketchup and my cost for ingredients was negligble as everything came out of the garden, I have jars coming out of my ears (people give them to me) so I really only paid for lids and electricity. But there's more to it than that - I have a skill. I can ketchup, BBQ sauce, chili sauce, pickles, applesauce, peaches, hamburger, apple butter, jams, soup, chili and on and on...

I also dehydrate fruit and veggies and use a root cellar and a freezer. I am not just stuck on canning 🙂

My focus has always been to learn to can real food. This year a friend taught me how to make pickles, relish and chili sauce. Tastes great. It was fun. But honestly - it's not real food 🙂 Ya know? We could live without ketchup (for awhile anyway!) but we can't live wihtout vegetables, fruit and protein.

So for food on the run canning might not be too helpful but for long term food self sufficiency it's the way to go. I am trying to make converts - how am I doing? 😆

I posted on my blog recently on how to make applesauce..probably the simplest thing to can. If you're interested - check it out here: http://adventures-in-country-living.blogspot.com/

I spent some time looking over your blog, and I love it. I would love to talk to you about over wintering chickens, as this is something I want to do by spring of 2013...maybe you could even be a guest on my radio show sometime. Anyways, I added you to my blog list..keep up the great posts!

Awww..thanks for the kind words Denob! I love to write but don't make as much time for it as I should - there always seems to be other things to do! I always thought I would write a book but blogging is less pressure and more fun because you get feedback!

Your blog is lovely, I think we have a lot in common from the couple of posts I read! 🙂

This year I hope to add citrus to my canning in the next couple of months when the new citrus crops come into the stores--marmalades, canned oranges and grapefruit--one recipe in a book I have is for honeyed grapefruit that sounds yummy, maybe even a jar of preserved lemons for fun and to try some north African dishes. I just found a recipe for an orange cranberry conserve that also sounds yummy, so I plan to try this to add to Christmas dinner.

What a great idea - canning out of season when you aren't as swamped with gardening and outdoor chores - and they sound yummy.

I grew up with a Mom and two Grandmas who canned out of necessity--big gardens, no electric for my grandparents in the early years--so it's always been a natural thing to do for me. I started on my own when I made baby food for my kids and also canned simple things like peaches and tomato sauce. It's just snowballed over the years as I began gardening and learned how to make pickles and jams. Pressure canning has added a wonderful dimension to our family life because it makes quick dinners so simple, my Mom passed down her 1970s Presto to me about 10 years ago and I was slow to get started but have been really enjoying it for the past few years. I picked up another second-hand that is a 12 quart (Mom's is an 18L) that I use more for pressure cooking, but it is sometimes so great to have more than one canner going at a time.

I would love to get another pressure canner - and maybe another stove too 🙂 Once you get going you really do spend more time watching the pot than actually preparing the food. We have a kitchen reno coming up in the next few years and a 6 burner gas stove is high on the list.