Happy birthday to me & Canning day

Saturday, March 1, was my 57th birthday.  Where did the time go.  I am now in my upper 50's.  I'm not sure I even qualify for middle aged any more.  I am kind of in between middle age and old age right not.  This seems pretty close to 60 to me.  I still do not feel like I am old enough (grown up enough) to get married or have children.  Maybe that 'grown up' feeling is more emotional than physical.  Physically the time for having children is long past for me.  I have 19 wonderful nieces and nephews who are not getting married and having families of their own.  I have 16 great nieces and nephews now also.  These are my kids.  I had many wonderful birthday wishes from them.  Maybe one day I will be 'grown up' enough to find that special man to share my life with.


Now for how I spend my birthday---
I bought a 25 pound bag of flour when in Wichita since I brought home some sourdough starter and a bread machine.  Remember, I live on a farm and you never know what kind of critters may get into this old farmhouse.  I have been reading about oven canning dry goods for long term storage so decided to try it.  I went to the barn to find some of the old canning jars that I got at Aunt Agnes's auction. I have blue and green tinted jars, square jars, a 1/2 gallon jar and a couple that must be 1 1/2 quarts.  Aren't these cute jars?

I filled the cleaned and sterilized jars with the flour and placed them in the oven at 200 degrees for one hour.  During the last 10 minutes I laid the canning flats on the pan in the oven to warm them up.  Taking one jar and flat at a time out of the oven, I placed the ring on the jar, hand tightened it down, and placed the jar on a folded towel to cool.  Within a half hour or so I heard each jar 'ping' as it sealed.  Who-hoo!! It worked!  This is how I did it. I had some flour left over so placed it in a Mylar bag that I had from some other food storage project.  I purchased a vacuum sealer food saver and wondered if it would work on the bag.  I gave it a try and it worked also. 

While the vacuum sealer was out I wondered if it really would seal a canning jar with a flat.  I had the attachments for it so decided to try it with chocolate chips.  Oh, my goodness, it worked too.  Here explains how I did this.


While I had a mess in my kitchen, (o.k. I admit my kitchen is always a mess) I decided to clean out my freezer some and took out 5 quart bags of home butchered and ground hamburger.  I browned this all up, added some salt and pepper, chopped some onions and ended up with a 6 quart dutch oven full of browned hamburger ready to can.  I drained the meat, packed it in jars, put on flats and rings then pressure canned it at 10 pounds for 90 minutes.  I did not cover the meat with juice but some do.  I like the texture better this was.  I really like this video and this blog post.
Here's the day's conquests.

I really had fun doing this.  Now I suppose I should clean up my kitchen. Ugg.
 Rose