Oh my goodness, my husband goes CRAZY over this stuff! It’s so good, super cheap, and very easy to make. Just how I like it! Hope you enjoy.

Country Style Cubed Steak & Gravy

• 1 1/2 lbs cubed steak (about three good sized pieces)
• 1 small onion, sliced
• about 1/4-1/2 cup flour
• 1 1/2 c. water
• 2 cans cream of whatever soup (ie: mushroom, chicken, or celery); I like cream of celery soup.
  
• salt and pepper

First, saute your onions in a little oil until tender and just browned; when done, set aside.

Salt and pepper both sides of your cubed steak. Put a little flour in a shallow dish, and coat both sides of each steak with the flour. Brown the steaks in the same skillet as the onions were in, with a little bit of oil, just until browned on both sides. Place the steaks in a baking dish (13×9), cover with cooked onions. Pour both soups over the tops of the steaks, then add the water to it all.

Bake at 400* for about an hour.

The gravy this makes is SOOOO good, and I don’t even like gravy! It’s especially nice served over mashed potatoes.

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• Onion Soup Mix Recipe
• Homemade Mayonnaise
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• The Best Banana Pudding

Freezing corn isn’t as easy as simply cutting it off the cob and packing it up. There are a few steps you need to take if you want to do it right. Let me walk you through them:

First step, round up some helpers. Kids especially LOVE shucking corn! Jada’s thing is finding the worms. It’s like a treasure hunt for her. (Yes, there are worms in there!)

Even the littlest can help! No, just kidding. Hey, how’d you get that corn, anyways?

Set your station up. Throw the corn husks into a container to compost (or feed the pig!), save the corn silk for herbal remedies,

Pick the worms out. (I told you there were worms. You didn’t believe me, did you.)

Cut the tip off, along with any bad parts.

Break off the stem.

And line up your nice, clean corn for the next step: Blanching.

You’ll need a pot of boiling water, and a pot of ice cold water, with lots of ice cubes. It’s also handy to have a pair of tongs on hand, to get the corn out of the hot water easily.

Once your water is boiling, put as many ears of corn as you can fit into the pot and keep it boiling. Start your time, you wanna let it boil for about 4-6 minutes.

When the timer goes off, immediately plunge the hot corn cobs into the ice cold water. Let them sit and cool for the same amount of time, 4-6 minutes. You’ll have to keep adding more ice to the pot as you go.

Rotate the next batch through, letting the cooled corn drain to the side until it’s all blanched.

Next, using a good knife, cut the corn off of the cob, as closely to the cob as possible. It’s best to cut with the smaller end up.

Once all of your corn is cut, you’re ready to fill some freezer bags. I always use a straw to vacuum seal the bags whenever I freeze anything in Ziplocs. Label and date, and there you go!

I’ve also been told that you can freeze corn in the husks for easy corn on the cob. How many of you have done this before?

Related Posts:

• Picking Corn From The Field
• Garden Update: May 21
• The Corn Frolic: Part Two
• The Corn Frolic: Part One

I just wanted to add that pressure canners are needed to can low acid foods, such as meats, seafood, and most veggies. If you are gonna make a combo of high-acids and low-acids (like a soup or stew), you’ll need to pressure can it. Your recipe will tell you whether you need a pressure canner or a water bath canner. Water bath canners just don’t get hot enough to kill the bacteria present in low acid foods.

Also, I wanted to correct myself. I mentioned that I thought the canner held 14 pint jars, but it’s actually 19.

Please don’t hessistate to ask any questions!

Related Posts:

• How To Can Beef Stew
• How To Make Apple Pectin: Easier Said Than Done!
• How You Can Score Some Free Canning Jars
• How To Can Green Beans
• Bread & Butter Pickles Recipe
• Deer Jerky Recipe

Man, I’m really enjoying this canning thing! I especially love that my pantry shelves are slowly being filled with beautiful jars of home canned goodies. Seeing as our freezer is stuffed with a quarter of a long horn steer we bought from a local farmer, I figured I’d free up some space and can all of the packages of meat labeled “beef stew meat”.

Canning beef stew is very easy. It’s the prep that takes forever! Once all of the meat was chopped into bite sized pieces, and the veggies were nice and diced, I was ready to roll.

Here is the recipe I used. It’s from the Ball Blue Book: Guide To Preserving.

Beef Stew For Canning

Yields 14 pints or 7 quarts

• 4-5 pounds beef stew meat, cut into bite size pieces
• 1 Tbsp oil
• 3 quarts cubed and peeled potatoes (about 12 medium)
• 2 quarts sliced carrots (about 16 small)
• 3 cups chopped celery (about 5 stalks) (I didn’t have any, so I substituted 2 Tbsp dried celery flakes.)
• 3 cups chopped onion (about 4 small)
• 1 1/2 Tbsp salt
• 1 tsp thyme
• 1/2 tsp pepper

Brown meat in oil. Combine meat, veggies, and seasoning in a very large pot (I actually had to use two pots to hold all of this). Cover with boiling water, and bring back up to a boil. Ladle hot stew into hot jars, leaving 1″ headspace. Tap jars to remove air bubbles, then cover with lid. In a pressure canner, process pints for 1 hour and 15 minutes, quarts for 1 hour and 30 minutes, at 10 pounds of pressure.

That’s it! I was thinking, next time I can this I’m gonna fill some smaller pint jars to send with my husband when he goes to work. They’d make a nice, hearty meal!

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• Video: How To Use An “All American” Pressure Canner
• How To Make Apple Pectin: Easier Said Than Done!
• How You Can Score Some Free Canning Jars
• How To Can Green Beans
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• Deer Jerky Recipe

As soon as I found out how to do this I had to give it a shot. See, a few weeks ago I was at Jerry’s parent’s house, and his mom told me that her apple tree had some apples on it that were ready to be picked. Well, dumb me went and picked from the wrong apple tree! I felt SO bad when we realized what I’d done. I totally wiped out an apple tree that wasn’t even ready yet! I had to find a way to use all of those bitter, unripened apples so that at least they wouldn’t be a total loss.

A big thanks to my Facebook friends who suggested I try this!

I was really excited to give this a try. After finding the right recipe, I set to work. Here’s how it’s done…

Gather several unripened apples; the more the merrier, the amount doesn’t really matter- 2 lbs is a good starting point. They should be hard, green, and a bit sour. Obviously, the first thing you need to do is wash the apples.

Next, cut the apples into pieces; quartered is fine. Keep the core and the skin as well. Add enough water to almost cover the apples; cover and heat on medium-low. It took over a day for my apples to cook down enough, though I did turn it off overnight and when I had to leave the house for a while. Keep stirring occasionally, breaking up the bigger pieces.

It’s ready when it looks like this, kinda like applesauce.

Next, you need to strain it. This will separate the pectin from the apple pulp. I put a strainer over a pot, lined the strainer with several layers of cheese cloth, and covered it to keep the bugs out. You might need to let it sit overnight, as it drains slowly. Don’t press on the mixture, unless you don’t mind cloudy pectin.

What you are supposed to get is a clear, thick, slimy liquid; that’s the pectin. Of course, I did something wrong somewhere down the line, and mine looked more like apple juice. Ha, it probably was apple juice now that I think about it!

Anyways, you can test your pectin to see if it will gel properly. To do so, get a spoonful of your pectin, and let it cool. Pour a little rubbing alcohol into a glass, then drop in your cooled pectin. The pectin ought to form a blob of gel, which you should be able to lift with a fork. If it is too runny to be lifted, then you’ll need to boil it down some more to increase the concentration, which is what I had to do.

But, please, don’t step away from the stove while your juice is cooking. Not even if it’s only for two minutes…

Yeah. That would be burned apple pectin. You gotta watch it closely, and stir constantly!

If you are lucky enough to get the clear, gel stuff you were supposed to end up with, you would use 4-6 Tbsp of pectin for every 1 cup of fruit juice when making jams/jellies. Once your pectin and fruit juices are mixed, add an equal amount of sugar (ie: 2 cups of pectin/fruit mixture to 2 cups of sugar). (Though there seem to be some discrepancies in the amount of sugar to pectin you should use.)

Then continue on making your jelly as usual. Heat the mixture over med-high heat, stirring constantly; bring to a boil and let it boil for about a minute. Test the jelly by dipping a spoon into the hot mixture. Hold it sideways; if the jelly drips off, let it boil a little longer, if the jelly slides off in one glob, it’s thick enough. Bring the mixture to a hard boil over high heat, then remove from burner.

Ladle the mixture into hot, sterilized jars. Seal, and you’re done!

Now, obviously I haven’t gotten this far yet, so I can’t say for sure that this will work as stated. If you have a different way of doing this, or you’ve found this doesn’t work, please give me a head’s up! If I’m ever successful at a second attempt, I’ll follow up with my results.

If you want to read some good articles on the subject, which go a little more into depth than this one, check out: Making Your Own Apple Pectin by Sam Thayer, and Dallas’s Recipe for Homemade Fruit Pectin.

Related Posts:

• Video: How To Use An “All American” Pressure Canner
• How To Can Beef Stew
• How You Can Score Some Free Canning Jars
• How To Can Green Beans
• Bread & Butter Pickles Recipe
• Deer Jerky Recipe

If you have a recycling facility in your area, it wouldn’t hurt to see if they’d let you have some of their glass jars. Just take a mason lid and ring with you, to make sure that they will fit on the jars you find!

Free jars! Yet another way to save money on canning your own food!

Do you recycle glass jars to can in? Do you know of another brand which uses mason jars that can be re-used for canning?

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• How To Make Apple Pectin: Easier Said Than Done!
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• Bread & Butter Pickles Recipe
• Deer Jerky Recipe

I lucked out though. The first guy we came to had green beans. $1.00 per pound. Sounded like a good price. I asked him how many beans he had, and he smiled and said, “I’ll give you a bushel if you want!” Of course, I had no idea how much a bushel was, but it sounded like a lot! He picked up a large crate stuffed with green beans to show me just how much we were talking. It looked like a good amount. After some negotiating we walked away with a bushel of green beans for $28. Honestly, he totally could have ripped me off, and lied about how much a bushel really was. I hoped I’d made a wise purchase, and was anxious to see how many jars I would actually be able to fill.

Here’s the crate of beans we bought next to my 8 quart pot, for comparison. It was a good amount of green beans! I’d never canned green beans before, so I got out my Ball Blue Book, and the owner’s manual for my pressure canner, and studied up on the task at hand. When I was confident that I was all ready to go, I sat down and began the long process of breaking beans. Jada helped me do a good amount of them, and my mother-in-law came over and broke beans for about 3 hours with me, so I was blessed to have help with the work! It took two days to finish it all.

For those of you who have no idea where to even begin, here’s how easy it is…

Sit down with your green beans, a trash can or bowl to throw the broken off tips in, and a large bowl or pot to throw the snapped beans in.

Begin by breaking the tips off each bean, then snapping it in pieces. I like 1″ pieces, but by the time I got to the bottom of the box I was just snapping the beans in half! My mother-in-law gave me a good pointer. She uses a knife to cut several beans at once, instead of breaking them one at a time.

Once you’ve finished breaking a good amount of beans, wash them well before canning. (Don’t wash the entire amount at once. If for some reason you are unable to finish the job right away, the beans could begin to go bad if sitting wet for a while.) Even if they have been grown organically, you still wanna get all of the dirt and stuff off. I put mine in my kitchen sink to soak, then rinsed a second time, since they were not grown organically. (Clean your sink out well! I used baking soda to scrub it down, rinsed with vinegar, then filled the sink with a couple of inches of water, added a little bleach, and let it soak to sanitize for a while.)

While the beans are soaking, get your supplies ready. You’ll need a large pot of boiling water, a smaller pot of simmering water (not boiling) to sanitize the lids in, and a pressure canner. You’ll also need to have clean, hot jars ready. (Make sure you have checked the jars for chips around the rim, and for any cracks.) I either get mine straight out of the dishwasher while they are still very hot, or I set the oven to the lowest heat setting and put the jars in there to keep hot until ready to be used. The jars must be hot before filling with boiling water, otherwise they will crack.

Now you are ready to fill the jars! I used the raw pack method (meaning the beans weren’t blanched before canning), because it’s just easier. Put as many green beans as you can fit into each jar. I used quart jars, which hold almost 4 cups of green beans. Tap the jar on the counter to pack the beans down tight, up to an inch from the top of the jar.

You can add salt if you want. I added 1 teaspoon to each quart jar. This is totally optional. You could also add onions, a teaspoon of sugar, or whatever else you’d like to flavor the green beans.

Next, ladle boiling water over the beans. Fill the jar up to the first thread on the neck- an inch from the very top. Tap the jar to release trapped air bubbles. Add more green beans if more space at the top has opened up.

This is how it ought to look. About an inch of head space. Use a clean, wet cloth to wipe the rim of the jar. This will ensure that there aren’t any food particles that could prevent the lid from sealing.

Now you’re ready for the lid. If you have one, use your magnetic lid lifter to retrieve one of the sanitized lids and place it on your full jar.

Secure the lid with a ring. Make sure you get it good and tight.

Place your filled jars in the canner. I’m not sure if all canners are the same, but this one requires an inch and a half of water before the jars are set on the rack in the bottom of the canner.

My pressure canner will hold 7 quart jars. Once it’s full, follow the manufacturer’s directions for your particular canner.

For quart jars, pressure can at 10 pounds of pressure for 25 minutes. (Pint jars only need 20 minutes.) Once it’s finished, make sure to allow the pressure to reach zero again before opening the canner.

A jar lifter is really handy for removing the steaming hot jars. (Notice the clock in the background? That’s midnight, folks, and I still had lots more to do!)

Set the hot jars on a rack to cool. As the jars cool off, you’ll hear the sound of the lids popping. Then you know they have sealed properly! After about 12 hours, unscrew the ring from the lid and see if you are able to easily pull the lid off of the jar. You should not be able to pull it up. If the lid comes off, the jar didn’t seal and you’ll need to either put that one in the fridge to be eaten right away, or start over by dumping the beans into another hot, clean jar and canning again with a different lid.

Make sure you write the date on the lid. Not only will you know when the beans were canned, but you’ll be able to tell that the lid has already been used. You aren’t supposed to reuse the lids… though I do save mine just in case I am ever desperate for a lid. I do wonder if they would seal again, wouldn’t hurt to try.

Here is a before and after of the beans. They do get cooked in the canning process.

Now, drum roll please…

Final total, 27 quart jars. It cost me a little over $1 per jar. After a little calculating I was disappointed to find that the cans of green beans at Aldi’s still would have been cheaper to buy! But you know, for the extra 20 cents (plus a lot of effort), at least I got fresh, local green beans. And nothing beats the satisfaction of having these beautiful jars in my pantry. No, this wasn’t a money saver. But, if you can grow enough of your own, or barter for them, canning them yourself would definitely save a bundle!

Canning Green Beans: Raw Pack Method

Break off tips of beans; snap into bite sized pieces. Wash, and drain. Pack beans into hot, clean jars, as tight as you can get them, leaving 1″ head space. Optional: Add 1/2 tsp salt to each pint jar, or 1 tsp salt to each quart jar. Ladle boiling water into each filled jar, leaving 1″ head space. Tap jars to remove air bubbles. Put lids on jars. Process pints for 20 min, or  quarts for 25 min. at 10 pounds of pressure in a pressure canner.

I’d love to try different recipes for canned green beans! Anybody have a favorite they’d like to share??

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• How To Can Beef Stew
• How To Make Apple Pectin: Easier Said Than Done!
• How You Can Score Some Free Canning Jars
• Bread & Butter Pickles Recipe
• Deer Jerky Recipe

All of our mouths were watering as the house filled with the aroma of these delicious pickles this morning!!

Here’s the recipe:

Makes 7 pints

• 4 quarts cucumbers, sliced (about 15, 6″-8″ cucumbers; leave peels on)
• 4 medium white onions, peeled and thinly sliced
• 2 quarts ice
• 1/2 cup pickling salt (regular table salt leaves a sediment in the jars)
• 5 cups sugar
• 1 1/2 tsp turmeric
• 1 tsp celery seed
• 2 Tbsp mustard seeds
• 5 cups apple cider vinegar

In a large pot (I use my pressure canner), mix cucumbers, onions, salt and ice. Cover with a lid and let sit for 3 hours. Next, drain the mixture well and return to pot. Add sugar, spices, and vinegar; heat until it’s almost boiling, stirring mixture- do not let it get to a boil.

In the mean time, have your jars either steaming in the dishwasher, simmering in a pot of hot water, or sitting in a low heated oven. You’ll need the jars hot before you add the extremely hot pickle mixture to them; otherwise the jars could break.

When the mixture is ready, pour into hot jars, leaving about 1″ headspace, and seal lids. Hot water bath for 10 minutes, just to be safe.

*Note: When I made this recipe I used 6 onions, and ended up with 9 pints of mixture. There were way too many onions though, in my opinion, so I adjusted the recipe accordingly.

Related Posts:

• Video: How To Use An “All American” Pressure Canner
• How To Can Beef Stew
• How To Make Apple Pectin: Easier Said Than Done!
• How You Can Score Some Free Canning Jars
• How To Can Green Beans
• Deer Jerky Recipe

I recently made deer jerky for the first time ever, using my dehydrator. It came out really tasty! At first, I was a little worried ’cause you don’t cook the meat, you just put it raw into the dehydrator. But the end product is cooked and ready for snacking! Definitely the way I’m gonna make jerky from now on!

Here is the recipe I used:

• 1 lb venison (fat and skin removed)
• 1 teaspoon liquid smoke
• 1 tablespoon A-1 Steak Sauce
• 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
• 1/2 teaspoon pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon onion powder
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/4 cup soy sauce

Slice venison about 1/4″ thin (slightly frozen meat will cut easier). In a large bowl, stir all of the ingredients together; add meat and let marinate several hours, or overnight.

You can cook this in a dehydrator, or in the oven.

If using a dehydrator, the method might be a little different, depending on your model. I have a Nesco American Harvest Dehydrator. On the jerky setting (155*F) it took 4-5 hours for the jerky to be done. Make sure you do not overlap the meat when filling the trays!

When cooking in the oven (which I have not tried yet), preheat to 150*. Place meat on a cookie sheet (again, not overlapping), and cook for 8-10 hours, or until done.

You can tell the jerky is ready when you can bend the meat and it does not break. Store in a ziploc bag or a jar in the cabinet, or keep in the fridge for longer storage. Will last several months.

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• How To Can Green Beans

I canned five pints of venison over the weekend, using my pressure canner for the first time ever. I have to say, having such a large contraption hissing and steaming at you is quite intimidating! At times, it was downright scary. And my husband wasn’t helping. He kept telling me, “Uh, Kendra, maybe you should get back from that thing. No, seriously, Get Back!” He’s so funny.

A friend of ours who hunts had a freezer full of venison. Well, his freezer went out and all of the meat had thawed, so he had to do something with it. He gave us several ziploc bags full of meat, but I knew I couldn’t re-freeze it, and it was way too much to eat within a few days, so I determined to can it.

After looking online for a good recipe for canned venison, I found THIS ONE:

Related Posts:

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• Video: How To Use An “All American” Pressure Canner
• How To Can Beef Stew
• How To Make Apple Pectin: Easier Said Than Done!
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• How To Can Green Beans