Does anyone know where I may purchase an All American pressure canner in the GTA.

They are available at SOME Home Hardware stores but it seems they do not carry all the sizes. You will probably have to order it into the store.

ok, ok, ok....someone explain something to me....when i can, put my peppers for instance, in water, in a jar...then in the canner....it heats the water and forces out all the air still in the can to preserve....i get all that....but are the peppers now cooked?

yup. Canning peppers to eat fresh is not a good idea - they are cooked. Canning tomato sauce with peppers in it makes better sense to me. Whatever you can will be cooked and ready to eat.

yup. Canning peppers to eat fresh is not a good idea - they are cooked. Canning tomato sauce with peppers in it makes better sense to me. Whatever you can will be cooked and ready to eat.

i can still stick em in a stir fry or stew...

Buy a jar of peppers, They're pretty rubbery and soft, They won't stay crisp. Maybe dehydrate??

The only way I know that will give you somewhat crispy perserved peppers is with picklings, canning or drying or freezing, will still all given you a much softer end result then a fresh pepper. I do dry more of mine then i can, other then in salsa, I do make a green pepper an red pepper pasta sauce just to have a choice to mix up the pasta sauces flavours or for use as a pizza base sauce.

For the stew or soup, I personally like to use the dried chopped bits, I find if you add them dry about 20 to 30 min before the soup is done, it gives a much better firmer bit of pepper then canned would, they tend to go mushy if re-cooked again, or at least that is how we feel about the texture.

Sorry I haven't be able to find the cattail jam recipe. I have only found recipes for the following:

Cat-Tail Pollen Pancakes
Cat-Tails on the cob
Boiled Cat-tail shoots

and a few milkweed recipes

boiled milkweed buds
milkweed bud salad
boiled milkweed pods

All of them are from the recipe book "Harvest without Planting" by Erika E Gaertner. She has written several books on the subject in the early 1960's.

Excellent! Thanks, I'll look into the book.

Thanks, I will look for her books, I have most of those in different books, other then the cat tails on the cob, that one is a new one to me, I keep a good size patch of milkweed on the farm, greens in the spring, and I like to use a limited about of the pods(silk) as a mock mozza cheese in a few different dishes. Thanks for looking for the jam recipe, I will cook a little root and see what happens if I follow a basic jam style recipe portions on it, and we will see what I get..

Thank you Anita. I will look into Home Hardware (HH) for the All American.