They didn't all seal, so I'll be having those tomorrow for lunch!

This was all the dehydrated stems from one batch of mushrooms. I'll make more once I get more mushrooms! Mushrooms are so much water.

A lot more celery dehydrated, like 6 bunches in there? Tomatoes are the same amount or less if husband nibbled some, and now onto mushrooms for adding to ramen and for grinding into powder later!

I'm going to need so much celery to get to the point I want for soups! That's one bunch. The tomatoes are a nebulous amount, those were garden grown

So it arrived damaged (the fan wasn't working and it was making hell sounds) so we asked for a refund and got it. They didn't want it back, so void the warranty time and...I think I for it working. I sacrificed an onion to it And so far the house smells oniony, the machine isn't making hell sounds, it sounds like the fan is on, and the machine isn't yet on fire, so I think it's working! Woo!

Not jalapeños from the garden though, those are just starting to flower. So far a lot have gone ping!

Last canning batch for the day. Once this is done we will have 10 jars sauce, 20 jars crushed. We still have quite a few tomatoes so I might see if we can do a smaller round or maybe I'll just make more sauce and freeze it.

I picked up two boxes ~ 30 lbs each of tomatoes from a local farmer earlier in the week and now it's time to do something about it.

We will mill one box today and I will reduce it into sauce for canning tomorrow. While we are canning the sauce I'll chop the other box for crushed tomatoes. I can do 10 pints at a time on the propane burner outside and maybe one day I'll get a stove that doesn't suck and do some inside at the same time 😂

I'd love to hear about your processes. We've been doing tomato sauce for 5 years and I think we are still just winging it each year. Maybe we could be more efficient?

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/47089104

Price of Great Value pintos beans per 15.5 oz can: 86¢. Price of 4 pounds of dried pinto beans: $3.76.
Number of pint jars worth of beans you get from a 4 lb bag: 15.

That brings us to 25¢ per jar because I'm reusing lids. I'll test each jar tomorrow for a proper seal to see if any of the reused lids failed. But they almost never do.

If you have to buy lids or don't have Tattler reusable kids then it's going to cost 55¢ per can and after figuring in labor and electricity it's probably not worth it. But if you are paying ~$1.40 a can for name brand pintos in a can then it's still worth it.

This will become burritos, refried beans and other things in the future.

Mother's day and birthday are near so she got to pick two things I'd make. One was strawberry lemonade concentrate and that's being difficult because the local store had no/bad strawberries so I keep looking. The pressure canner one she wanted was chicken soup. And I need like 16 cups of stock, so canning it was! Then soup tomorrow hopefully.

Hi all, I recently did a 7-day hike and realised how expensive it is to buy freeze-dried food.
So i'm thinking to buy/acquire a dehydrator somehow.

Anybody have experience with what brands to look for, and what kind of food to try first?

I'm planning to use it for making food that we can prepare on a hike, preferably just by adding hot water. I also want to have some stored at home as 'emergency' meals for when we are too tired to cook!

Terrible day but I started this stock and I was going to get it canned. Six jars total but the canner holds five so five and one in the fridge!

Was my first time canning beans, had a bit of syphoning but otherwise went well!

And this time I'm pretty sure they all sealed! Well this batch. The first batch only had one seal. I'm not sure why they like to siphon. The second batch was also regular mouth instead of wide, so maybe that helped?? Regardless, delicious and even unsealed jars are getting eaten soon!

The Asian Supermarket has a huge selection of bones. I was expecting to only find oxtails but they had neck and feet as well! And duck feet so my next thing will be duck feet stock! Exciting!

I think 4 of the 5 pint jars have sealed. I'm mentally willing the last to seal lol.

Really unctuous! Fancy! Exciting!

Candied jalapeños my beloved, as family and friends love them so they're good gifts! Also the first use of the electric canner! It worked like a dream. Warmed the jars, went smoothly into fill, heat, cook, and then cool! And so much less steam in the kitchen overall! Amazing.

The big gift this year! Exciting! I've never pressure canned, and this thing is so fancy! It had a jar warming part of the cycle, it has cycles, and it can do water bath canning as well!! I'm excited to try using it after the holidays!

Ten jars this time! All sealed as well, which is nice. For some reason, most years one jar of apple butter just refuses to seal.

Our apple trees were crazy fruitful this year so I decided to try my hand at some apple butter. I'll for sure be making more soon, it's delicious.

I canned more sauce today.

I even set out the lemon juice, but forgot to put it in. I'm blaming it on the wine.

Boiling water bath works well with the tattlers.

My wife bought a rotisserie chicken, so we made stock with the carcass. Its just so good to get 5 liters of stock from what would be garbage. Tattler lids worked well today, only one didn't seal. I don't normally do that well. Easier to get them to seal in a water bath.

60 lbs of tomatoes yielded:

• 10 x 500 mL of sauce
• 19 x 500 mL of crushed tomatoes
• 5 x 500 mL (ish) of crushed tomatoes in freezer bags.

That's all for 2025 ☺️

Bonus photos of the deer watching us toil:

Salsa recipe from Ball canning, called Fresh Salsa. I had never peeled a tomato before. It wasn't as difficult as I feared. Also managed to have enough garden tomatoes I didn't need the backup store tomatoes!

cross-posted from: https://crazypeople.online/post/6674394

Cross posting because someone was asking about preserving meals, and dehydrating is an option that people might not always think about! I'll add more context in a comment.

It's chilli: pinto beans, tvp, mixed veg, tomato sauce, jalapeno, and seasoning. I think the seasonings were salt, celery seeds, veg bullion, chilli powder, cayenne, and cinnamon. I made it in an electric pressure cooker.

I dehydrated it for about 24 hours before I broke it up and stored it in an air tight container.