Castle Curmudgeon is host to a wondrous new technological advancement.
Steam pressure! If only we could harness this for locomotive power to pull train cars!
I’m delighted with this development. We have a bunch of layabout chickens which haven’t been pulling their weight lately and they need to be converted from fowl on the lawn to meat in a mason jar. For the moment, my wife has assured me that men are too stupid to operate this machine and I’ve been gently escorted to the kitchen’s perimeter. Probably for the better; the ancient and mysterious magic of “cooking” is being applied to tomato sauce and I know nothing of such things.
Update:
After this I'm gonna' skin a buck and run a trot line.
Trust me. On the kitchen’s periphery, beer in hand, is the BEST way to do pressure canning.
I’m opting to sleep on the porch swing. Seems only prudent.
I’ve never tried canning, because for the most part I don’t like canned food, and because I hate gardening (Curmudgeon, yes, adaptive…..only up to a point). But it’s my kitchen. My Mother learned to cook from my Father’s cookbooks (longtime bachelor, he had learned to cook in self defense), and she made sure that I know how to do basic cooking before I left her household, so (as she put it) I would marry for a more important reason than being tired of Chef Boyardee. I don’t buy into the “All the Great Chefs are Men, you know” meme; I just think that a man should know his way around a kitchen to the point that his Lady doesn’t consider his appearance there an incipient disaster.
OTOH, it’s My Lady’s gas grill.
Go figure.
I can cook. But it’s more like “rations” than food. Which is why I’m more excited about canning chicken and butchering deer than making a desert or something. Rations seems plenty good enough most of the time. My wife disagrees…which is why food she makes is yummy.
Canning is not required of all people but it has been on our homestead “to do” list forever. Another reason I’m so happy to see it bubbling on the stove. Always good to make progress.
Reminds me of shelling peas when I was a kid. I just about gritted my teeth smooth when I had to do that. Then canning the next day. Man, that was a while ago. Canned a ton of chow-chow during a school week night once. A freeze was due, and the vines were loaded with green tomatoes. Made me miss my mom and our old house in the county. Thanks AC! It’s been a while since I thought about that.
We started canning several years ago, good to see that you’ve started. It’s another of the almost lost arts of old and I consider it mandatory for those that want to be prepared and more self-sufficient.
By the way you have a great blog, I really enjoy it! It’s taken me several weeks, but I’m finally caught up on your archives. So from one fire wood cutter to another, keep up the great posts.
I love canning season. I’m allowed to help with cranking the food processor, boiling the jars, and peeling the peaches and tomatoes. Other than that, I agree with ZerCool – beer in hand outside the “line of death” is a great way to participate.