Answering some questions

Lots of people asked questions on yesterday's post, Testing a Theory. Unfortunately I haven't been able to answer any of them because once in a while Blogger glitches and doesn't let me reply to any questions. Go figure.

So I thought what I would do is go down the list of comments, and make replies as needed. If more people ask question in response to this post, I'll add them at the bottom of this post and answer as best I can. Sorry about that, but I can't control Blogger glitches.

Questions in the order they were asked:

Q: When will you do a longevity inspection? Also do you pop the lid into its original shape with the dimple out?

A:  With disposable lids, they either seal or they don't. I've rarely had a jar unseal after storing it in the pantry, and I've canned thousands upon thousands of jars of food over the last 30 years. If the dimple is out, the lid didn't seal. If the lid didn't seal once out of the canner, then simply refrigerate it and use it up in a few days. If the lid unsealed after a period of time in storage, then don't risk using it. The food should be discarded in a place animals can't get to it.

It's surprisingly hard to photograph the "dimple" in the center of a canning lid, but I tried. The jar on the left is processed and sealed; notice the "insie" (inverted) dimple in the center. The jar on the right hasn't been processed yet; notice the "outsie" dimple.

Q: I have always water bathed my salsa and was curious as to why you used the pressure canner?

A. Never ever ever water-bath salsa. Salsa contains endless low-acid components such as bell peppers, onions, etc. The rule of thumb while canning is to process the food in accordance with the ingredient requiring the longest processing time. If you consult your canning book (I always recommend having a canning reference book on hand), they will ALWAYS recommend pressure-canning anything with low-acid ingredients such as peppers or onions.

Q: Can you please explain how you get your lids off the first time canner jar with out making a crease or a "lift" on the outside of the lid? I have tried many various ways and it seems like there is always an imperfection.

A: Yeah, it's kinda tricky. I used to use the bottle-cap feature on our can opener for prying lids off canning jars:

Then a few years ago I ordered a dedicated lid opener from Tattler (the red one). I liked it so well I later ordered a couple extras (the blue one).

However when I compared the two, I found they were different.

The red lifter – the one I ordered earlier – had a metal lip for prying up the lid.

The later version is blunt plastic.

I presume the reason this was modified is because Tattler got too many complaints that the metal lip was piercing the rubber gasket in the process of prying open a jar. I've never done that with the red opener, but only because I'm very careful.

Anyway, this is a long way of saying, use a blunt lifter of some sort on the disposable lids and gently work it until the seal breaks (other readers provided some excellent ideas in their replies to the last post). You might have to rotate the jar and pry at the lid from different positions before the seal breaks. But don't just use a sharp object (like the bottle opener feature) and bend the lid to open it. This way your disposable lids will likely be in fine shape to use again.

Q: I never thought of canning a store bought item (duh!) so thank you again and I will try it. Would water bath be good or does pressure canned do better for an already processed food product.

A: For things we often use, I like buying in bulk (usually from a restaurant supply store) and re-canning them into smaller and more manageable sizes. The usual things I re-can are mustard, pizza sauce, and of course salsa. I've also re-canned ketchup and barbecue sauce. The mustard can be canned in a water-bath since it's high-acid (30 minutes at a rolling boil). Same with ketchup, barbecue sauce, and pizza sauce IF it is nothing but tomatoes and spices. Salsa should be done in a pressure canner, 30 minutes for pints at 10 lbs. pressure (adjusted for your elevation).

If anyone has any more questions, just pose them in the comments and I'll answer them on this post.

Q&A: Laundry, eggs, meals

Here are a few recent questions posed by readers:

“Can you tell us a little bit more about your system for hanging clothes, please? I can’t really tell how it’s done on those larger clothing items. Looks like a great idea though.”

Once upon a time, I had a regular clothesline.


Clearly it was great for summer use, but not so great for winter use, so during inclement and cold weather I just used our (propane) dryer.

Then two things happened.

One, we ran short of propane in January 2008, during a time when there was too much snow on our rugged dirt road for the propane delivery guy to fill our tanks. We had to severely curtail any and all propane use, including the dryer. So I went to a local hardware store to see about a standing clothes drying rack. The sales clerk showed me the only one they had left in stock, sitting on a shelf, for the rather exorbitant price of $45. “But it’s broken,” I said to the clerk, pointing to a fractured dowel.

“Then I’ll drop the price to $30,” he said.

“But it’s also broken here.” I pointed to another fractured dowel.

“$15 then.”

“Deal!”

I took the rack home, mended the dowels with wood glue, set it up in front of the wood stove, and hung a load of laundry. It only held one load, but it dried the clothes beautifully. I remember looking at it and telling Don, “I’ll never use the dryer again.” And I haven’t.

I used that single indoor clothes rack exhaustively throughout all winter weather thereafter. The only annoying thing is it really didn’t hold sheets well – it was far too small. So when it came time to wash sheets, I only washed one set at a time and draped them over the handrail of our stairs to dry.

Then the second thing happened: My outdoor clothesline broke from overuse in October 2010 (dropping four loads of wet laundry to the ground).

So Don built me a clothes rack suspended from the ceiling of our upstairs, which has a pitched roof.

Originally the rack was on pulleys suspended by paracord, the idea being I would raise or lower the rack as needed. As it turned out, I literally never moved the rack at all – it was at a fine level for hanging clothes – and the only disadvantage is it blocked the doors to a tiny second-floor deck.

A couple years ago, Don removed the rack, split it in half length-wise, and rehung it in another part of the upstairs under the sloped ceiling (on permanent supports, not pulleys), so now we have full access to the little outside deck.

This clothes rack absolutely revolutionized our household laundry. It easily holds four loads of laundry. I hang shirts on hangers along the edges.

Sheets are no trouble at all – I remember once when we were all recovering from the flu, I had everyone strip their beds and I washed all the sheets and hung them without a problem.

I have two standing racks I use for socks and dish towels.

Interestingly, Older Daughter requested a standing rack as a birthday present last December. Growing up with line-dried clothes, at first she thought a clothes dryer was kinda neat (she’s a live-in nanny with a professional family in New Jersey), but now she understands dryers are expensive to operate and batter the clothes around. She uses her collapsible clothes rack when needed and folds it away in her closet when it’s not in use.

And so the legacy continues.

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Next question:

“What do you do with your extra eggs? Do you barter, or feed them to Darcy or what?”

All of the above. We barter them, we sell them, and a few go to Mr. Darcy. A few years ago, we bartered eggs for Younger Daughter's music lessons. We have several neighbors who buy eggs, and I have a lady in Coeur d’Alene who will take eight or ten dozen eggs whenever I’m in town (every few weeks). Yesterday I had fourteen dozen eggs in the fridge (!!) but thankfully my buyer in Coeur d'Alene took the whole batch. Obviously the chickens don’t lay this heavily year-round.

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Last question:

“Also, now that you are empty nesters, how much time do you spend making meals and what are some of your typical meals? You have mentioned Don loves sandwiches so do you go simple with just the two of you?”

Yes, Don is a sandwich guy, so I make sure we always have fresh bread in the house (I use a bread machine and make about three loaves a week).

Since the kids are gone, we don’t jointly cook much, so we just forage whatever is in the fridge. We have a freezer full of beef, so sometimes Don cooks a roast, slices it, and that becomes lunch meat. Of course we’ll eat any leftovers when we host the neighborhood potluck.

Right now the garden is just getting planted so we don’t have much by way of fresh food (unless we buy it), but we have a pantry full of food I canned up, so we’ll often raid that. In short, we just eat when we’re hungry and have whatever is on hand.

Q&A: Jersey Giant chickens

Question from a reader:

I've been wanting to buy some Jersey Giant chickens for a while now. When I saw you got them I was thrilled. Could you tell me how they are doing? How do they deal with Idaho winters, their temper, how many eggs. Are they overall a healthy chicken? Would love some feedback on that. Thanks!

We've Jersey Giants for almost three years now. So far we've been very satisfied with them as a breed.

The females aren't especially large -- the same size as our one Black Australorp hen -- but the roosters are very big. At the moment we have way too many roosters -- five -- two of whom are our "herd sires" and the other three of whom we're waiting to reach their full size to butcher. We haven't butchered any of our own birds yet, but these boys look like they'll dress out at about ten pounds or a bit under. Jersey Giants take about nine months to reach their full growth, but unlike the fast-growing Cornish Crosses, they stay healthy instead of having their bodies fall apart.

We have not found the roosters to be at all aggressive to people; which, considering their size, is a durn good thing. The roosters tend to fight with each other, so one of our future projects is a rooster house where we can raise young roosters away from the older boys (and the hens) until they're of butchering weight.

The hens lay brown eggs, sometimes faintly speckled, of regular size (not especially big). They're just as good layers as any other breed of hen we've ever had.

One advantage of the ladies is they go broody at the drop of a hat, which is why I've taken to calling Jersey Giants the triple-purpose breed: meat, eggs, broodiness. Having hens so willing to hatch and rear their own chicks is a great contributor toward a sustainable chicken venture, IMHO.

While this winter has been fairly mild so far, last winter was quite bad: Lots of snow, lots of cold. The chicken coop is not heated, and the birds all did fine.

They're a healthy breed and we haven't noticed any problems with how they grow or mature. Overall I've been quite pleased with Jersey Giants, and I'm sure we'll be even more so when we get into full meat production (hopefully this year).

Q&A session?

A reader just posted the following:

Patrice, this is off subject but would you ever consider a post that just answers questions? We are about to head up to Idaho for our fourth time in as many months and planning a move. But as you wrote that you were driving a 2k car, we are completely ignorant as to what vehicle we need in Northern Idaho. I was assuming a heavy 4 wheel drive but it doesn't sound like that is what you drive. Many other people probably have questions also. Thanks.

Hmmm. This might be an interesting idea. Does anyone have questions they'd like me to answer, to the best of my ability? (I reserve the right not the answer anything I don't want to, LOL. You can't have our bank account number, for example.)

To answer this gentleman's question: We live 1.5 miles off-road, meaning we can easily get snowed in during wintry weather (until some hardworking neighbors team up to plow everyone out). We've always used smallish vehicles that are high-clearance, four-wheel drive, and hatchback (the better for loading chicken feed or wood). Until it died, we had a Hundai Tucson that was the toughest little beast you ever saw. Armed with studded tires and chains, it handled all kinds of hairy road conditions. That said, we also know when to stay home.

While a beefy pickup truck has its uses -- and we have one -- it's impractical for day-to-day driving. My auto preference is for a high-clearance vehicle as opposed to, say, a low-slung sedan. We currently have two inexpensive vehicles, both costing $2000 from used-car lots: a Hundai Santa Fe (technically Younger Daughter's vehicle) and a 2000 Dodge Durango.

Hope this helps.