This was pretty fun. Leigh came over yesterday for a personal canning class and we had a blast. Well, okay, we had the most fun you can have while you wait 90 minutes for your chicken to process in a pressure canner. Here are some pictures of Leigh getting her chicken into jars and then the processed jars (still boiling) after coming out of the canner. We also did some pinto beans as the processing time is the same for chicken, and I wanted to fill the canner. Wide mouth jars are the easiest to pack meat in. I like regular mouth jars for small stuff like beans. You don't have to get your hand in the jar to pack stuff like that. It takes about 2 pounds of chicken for a quart jar and the canner will hold 7 quarts at a time. Pints hold about a pound, and again the wide mouth is best. The canner holds 8 pints at a time. If you watch the sales, you can save a lot on your meat purchase, even freeze it to do another day if you are busy with other things that week. I bought 55 pounds of chicken to do before Christmas, and I just barely got it all into jars. I saved over $100.00, so feel pretty good about that. If you just want to do a little at a time, that's fine too. It all works. The directions for doing chicken are in the post after this. I would love to do this for anyone interested, so don't be intimidated by canning food and come on over to learn. I can all the time, and even though some of my kids think I'm sick, I really enjoy it. They like to eat the food well enough. I have canned applesauce, pie apples, pinto beans, white (northern) beans, chicken, top sirloin, green chile, ground beef, tomato mix, tomatoes, peaches, pears, BBQ sauce, vegetable beef soup, and salsa. I am getting ready to do carrots, ham and maybe some green beans. If I haven't done what you want to can, I'll find out how to so you can do it.
After the chicken is in the canner, we had time to visit, play solitaire, and we had fun. I enjoyed getting to know Leigh better. She is the bomb!
