Canning oopsie

I picked up a couple of gallon jugs of barbecue sauce last time I was in the city, specifically for purposes of re-canning into pint jars.

We don't go through a whole lot of BBQ sauce, but we like it in meatloaf or on a hamburger. Having some canned up in the pantry would be convenient.

And re-canning BBQ sauce is easy-peasy. Pour it into clean jars, pop on the lids and rings, water-bath it for 15 to 20 minutes, and voilà.

So that's what I did. I got the jars filled.

I scalded the Tattler lids and gaskets.

I got the pots and racks ready.

And then I realized..........I had no rings.

Seriously, I must have hundreds of canning rings (they reproduce during the wee hours of the night, I'm sure of it), but I remembered they're all packed away in a storage unit in our old town. I'm so used to having all my canning supplies at my fingertips that it didn't occur to me to look for rings until all the jars were already filled. Crud.

You should have seen me after that, tearing apart the pantry for any stray or random ring I could find. I stripped rings from spice jars, honey jars, and dehydrated foods.

In the end I had to re-pour some of the sauce into wide-mouth jars because I found more wide-mouth rings than regular rings, but at least I had enough to cap all the jars.

Those two gallon jugs of BBQ sauce filled 17 pint jars, certainly enough to last us a long time.

I have some other things I want to put in jars in the future, but you can bet I'll check my rings first. 

It will be nice when we finish moving. Having our household goods scattered in distant locations gets awkward at times.

Canning supply shortage?

While corresponding a couple days ago with Glenda Lehman Evrin, VP of Marketing at Lehman's, she mentioned something in passing that staggered me: "By the way, we just heard from Ball [the manufacturer] ... no canning jars until March of 2021!"

Almost immediately after that, I received a generic email from Tattler reusable canning lids (I'm on their email list) as follows: "Due to a nationwide canning supply shortage, we have been overwhelmed with orders. Everyone at Tattler is working diligently to get them out to each and every customer as quickly as possible. We know everyone wants to know the status of their order, but due to the overwhelming amount of emails it is prohibitive to respond. Thank you for understanding. We are sorry for the inconvenience."

I haven't had to buy canning supplies for years, so somehow I completely missed this devopment, but it seems there is a severe nationwide shortage of canning supplies.

A quick internet search confirmed it:

• Watch out, there's a canning lid shortage

• The latest COVID-19 shortage is canning lids

• Trouble in store as Covid canning craze leads to empty shelves and price gouging

• Shortages of canning supplies cause headaches for home gardeners

• Canning lids are in short supply

• If You’re Struggling to Find Canning Supplies Right Now, You're Not Alone

• Increase in canning during quarantine leads to supply shortage

• The Great Canning Lid Shortage of 1975, and a history of canning lids

As a passionate canner, how did I miss all this? I mean honestly, how?

Glenda added in a later email: "Ball said they have stopped accepting purchases orders until they get caught up and won’t ship anything until March of 2021. When I go to the grocery I am always surprised at what they are out of – one week it’s paper towels, the next week it is tomatoes, and the next week it is hamburger. Strange times."

So I looked around, and by golly everyone's right. Canning supplies are in short supply.

Here's the shelf at our local grocery store:

Then I went into the city (Coeur d'Alene) a couple days ago, first time since early August. Specifically I went to Walmart, where I haven't been in nearly a year, certainly since before the whole coronavirus was a thing. My goal was to find some moccasin slippers.

Well, it was a challenge.

This could be why: Made in China.

In fact, I saw a surprising number of understocked shelves at Walmart, in a variety of unrelated categories -- shoes, office supplies, and of course canning supplies.

(As an interesting aside, the young man -- and I mean young; he looked 18 or so -- operating the cash register was wearing a "thin blue line" face mask. I couldn't quite hear what customers were saying to him -- remember, we were all spaced six feet apart -- but it seemed he was getting many compliments. I know I gave him one.)

My next stop was Winco, which had utterly bare shelves where the canning supplies were supposed to be.

As I checked out at Winco, the polite checker asked me if I had found everything I was looking for. "Everything except canning supplies," I quipped. She laughed ruefully and shook her head.

What's your experience? What are you seeing? If you can't find canning supplies, how are you coping?

Gotta love garlic

If there's one thing I love to grow in the garden each year, it's garlic.

Year after year, this beautiful allium produces a dependable crop of huge cloves.

After harvesting, I work in the shade of the barn where I trim off all the stems. I grow a German porcelain-neck garlic. Rather than those annoying cloves that get smaller and smaller toward the center, this kind of garlic has large (and sometimes huge) cloves around a central stiff (or "porcelain") stem. It's got a nice bite to it, just as garlic should.

A friend wanted to grow some of her own, so I passed on several heads for planting.

After pulling garlic, it needs to dry out for a few days. I laid the garlic out on cardboard on some wire shelves we have in the house.

Over time, I peeled the garlic. It's kind of a laborious task, but for some reason I don't mind it. I do a bit at a time and rather enjoy pulling shining creamy-white garlic cloves from the dirty skins.

I kept back 150 of the largest cloves for planting, and on October 29, I went out to plant them in the garlic boat. Mr. Darcy was a huge help.

So huge, in fact, that I had to put him back in the house until I was finished. There's only so much help I can take, doncha know.

I started by scraping back the pine needle mulch, thinking I could plant half the bed at a time.

But since I like to lay the whole bed out before planting, I ended up removing all the mulch for the moment.

Planting takes no time at all. Shove a trowel into the dirt, angle it out to create a space, drop in the clove (root side down), remove the trowel, and it's on to the next clove.

Then I recovered the bed with pine needle mulch, and that's it for garlic in the garden until next summer.

But I still had to preserve the garlic. I usually can my garlic, since we don't have a basement or root cellar for long-term storage of cloves. This year's harvest was kinda light, about 7.5 lbs altogether.

To can it, I start by chopping it up using a food processor.

Then I parboil it by heating water to boiling, turning off the heat, then adding the chopped garlic and letting it sit for about ten minutes.

Then I drain the pot, reserving the cook water.

I fill the jars with the heated, drained chopped garlic, then later top off the jars with garlic-y cook water.

Scalding the Tattler lids.

I ended up with twelve pints. Garlic is low-acid, of course, so I used the pressure canner.

Adjusted for our elevation, I held it at 12 lbs. pressure for 25 minutes.

During the course of canning it, I heard a loud "PANG" from inside the canner. "Lost a jar," I remarked to Don. Sure enough, after things had cooled down and I removed the canner lid, I had a jar which broke out its bottom. I didn't dare keep the garlic from the jar since I didn't want to risk ground glass. Eh, this stuff happens.

And meanwhile I had 11 other jars of beautifully preserved garlic to last us over the next year.

Gotta love garlic. And canning.

Tattler canning lids is having a flash sale

UPDATE: See note at bottom of post from Loren Stieg, Tattler's president.

If anyone is interested in trying Tattler reusable canning lids, they're currently having a flash sale:

According to the info they sent:

3 Day Sale! Starting Monday April 3rd - Wednesday April 5th 2017

Get 10% Off your entire order*.

Use code: aprilshowers at checkout.

Free Shipping to the Contiguous U.S. on all orders over $50.00.

Outside the Contiguous U.S. please contact us for a shipping quote via email at
info@reusablecanninglids.com

*Cannot be combined with any other offer.

Here's to a great Spring Season! Thank you from your friends at Tattler Reusable Canning Lids!
Shop Now

Visit Our Website

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I've been a fan of Tattler lids for many years. In my opinion, they are an excellent investment for any dedicated canner.

UPDATE: Loren Stieg, president of Tattler, left the following comment which I wanted to bring to everyone's attention:

Tattler users: Occasionally we have a question from a user with this issue. We usually encourage someone who has this experience to contact me personally and we can get to the cause. We do however have extensive videos and instructional material on our website, www.reusablecanninglids.com for your assistance also. We are more than happy to assist our customers in any way to make your experience using Tattler lids a positive experience. ONE OTHER VERY IMPORTANT POINT!!. The phone number showing on the Tattler box on the side bar is no longer the number to the original Tattler manufacturing headquarters. The new customer service number is 231-349-2325 or for Tech. support, company President personally, Loren Stieg is 231-832-4401.

Tomato sauce -- done at last

I've finally -- finally! -- finished the tomato sauce.

This was a long journey that began in June when we planted 16 tomato plants.

We harvested a few tomatoes here and there, and as I harvested them I used the food strainer to purée them, then froze the purée.

After ripening all the green tomatoes...

...and puréeing them, the freezer was stuffed with purée.

I didn't want to start cooking down the purée into tomato sauce until two things happened: One, all the green tomatoes had ripened; and two, the cookstove was in constant use (as opposed to letting it go out during the day). As December's temperatures dropped and the cookstove was always hot, I started processing the purée.

I defrosted four bags at a time.

By letting the frozen bags defrost overnight, some of the watery portions leaked out of the bag and into the bowl. Just that much less to cook down.

Then it was time to pour it into a large stock pot.

I nested two pots double-boiler style and parked them on the stove. About three times a day, I topped off the water in the lower pot so it wouldn't boil dry. I didn't use a lid, since I wanted the liquid to cook down.

I stirred the purée a few times a day. After one night of cooking, you can see how far down it reduced.

It took about three days for each pot of purée to reduce to sauce consistency.

And while it made the house smell rich and tomato-y during this process, I had to repeat it three times to use up all the purée in the freezer. Nine days of smelling cooking tomatoes got to be a bit much. You can also understand why I wanted to use the passive heat from the cookstove to make the sauce. Nine days of cooking the sauce on our propane stove would have used a lot of propane.

I re-froze the first batch of tomato sauce, figuring I'd defrost and can all the sauce at once; but that was the wrong thing to do since I had to re-defrost the sauce and heat it thoroughly (tomato sauce should be hot-packed), plus I could only process so many jars at a time. So from then on I just canned each batch of sauce after it cooked down and while it was still hot, and this worked out far better.

Tomatoes can be water-bath canned (unless there are additives like onions or bell peppers). I never flavor my tomato sauce because I like it to be "generic." That way I can take a jar and flavor it however I like, such as Mexican or Italian or whatever.

Because the acid content of tomatoes, even heirloom varieties, is never assured, it's necessary to add an acidifier.

In this case, I added a quarter-teaspoon of citric acid to each pint. (I also added a half-teaspoon of salt to each jar.)

Scalding my Tattler lids.

Into the water bath for 30 minutes (actually, about 35 minutes adjusted for our elevation).

First batch, done.

Second batch, processing

By the time the third and final batch was cooked down and canned up, I was thoroughly sick of tomatoes.

Fortunately that feeling is tempered by the utter satisfaction that comes from concluding a project which was home-grown, from beginning to end, on our farm.

One of the many reasons I love canning.