Helping you create a home by hand.

It’s Canning Season

Well… when you own a pressure canner… (<-affiliate link) canning season runs year round because you’re replenishing your stock of  soups, stews and broths.  But this is by far the busiest time for canning.  Yesterday our son and I went to one of the local farmer’s/flea markets just to see what might be available.

We came home with a bushel of green beans.  So yesterday afternoon was spent topping and tailing, slicing some and making french green beans with the rest.  Then the later part of the afternoon was taken up with blanching.  Now strictly speaking, it’s not necessary to blanch beans before pressure canning them, but we find that it helps them to retain more of their colour and definitely makes it easier to fit the french green beans into the jars.

After supper, it was time to fill jars and pressure can them.

At the end of the day, we had 23 pints; 9 pints of sliced and 14 pints of french.

23 pints of green beans

On our next trip to a farmer’s market I’m hoping to find sweet corn to freeze and can.  And I’ll also be on the look out for good deals on tomatoes to turn into diced canned tomatoes, tomato sauce and salsa.

This post contains affiliate links. For more information please check my Disclosures and Disclaimers page. It doesn’t cost you any extra, but it does help support this site.

I would be so pleased if you chose to share by clicking on one of the buttons below!

3 Comments

  • Sandra :)
    August 6, 2011 11:11 pm

    French cut green beans are my FAVOURITE – yummy! I buy the ones in the can (with added onions and red peppers), then I eat the whole can, lol. My mom must have served these a lot when I was younger – I don’t remember it, but I always get a comforting homey feeling when I eat them!

  • Robin (rsIslandCrafts)
    August 3, 2011 1:33 pm

    I keep seeing lots of post on Facebook about people canning. I grew up canning with my Grandmother and Aunt and I plan on getting back into soon. I think it is a wonderful way to take advantage of fresh produce. Are french style green beans just sliced and that’s what makes them french style? Do you add anything into the jars beyond the beans and water? I’m the only one who eats green beans at my house. I think I would probably do a bit of experimenting with flavors since I don’t have to worry about what other people like and don’t like.

    • supermom
      August 3, 2011 11:30 pm

      French style beans are sliced lengthwise rather than across the bean. We actually have a bean frencher something like this… http://www.gardenersedge.com/green-bean-frencher/p/NPGBF/ . It makes frenching the beans go so much faster than doing it by hand.

      The only thing I add to the jars is 1/4 tsp of canning salt and it’s certainly not necessary, we just find we prefer the taste of the beans more with a little salt added. When adding other ingredients to the green beans remember that spices don’t change the processing time… but adding something like onions or peppers might so make sure to check the pressure canning time for that particular ingredient. As a rule of thumb… use the processing time for the ingredient that requires the longest time.

      A great resource if you’re planning to get back into canning is the Yahoo Group… Canning 2. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Canning2/ The group files are simply filled with all sorts of canning info and recipes and if you have any questions, there’s usually someone who has the answer.

Comments are closed.