Fruits and Vegetables

"One day, Little Sal went with her mother to Blueberry Hill to pick blueberries.

Little Sal brought along her small tin pail and her mother brought her large tin pail to put berries in. 'We will take our berries home and can them,' said her mother.

'Then we will have food for the winter.'

On the other side of Blueberry Hill, Little Bear came with his mother to eat blueberries.

'Little Bear,' she said, 'eat lots of berries and grow big and fat.

We must store up food for the long, cold winter.'"

Robert McCloskey, Blueberries for Sal

Fruits and Vegetables

Home Canning

How do you have fresh fruits and vegetables while eating from your food storage?

On a regular basis, if you are rotating through your food storage, and still buying food, you can easily add salads, fresh fruits and vegetables to your diet. You can still have a master meal list for your family and include fresh things, like salad with spaghetti, or peaches with lunch, or bananas with breakfast.

Now, what if you have a reason that you are living on just your food storage? Then, you will certainly want to have fruits and vegetables on hand! You can have canned, frozen, freeze-dried, and dried. We have lots of canned fruits, plus dried raisins, apricots, and cranberries. You can also have canned and frozen juices on hand, bought when they go on sale.

Another option is to have a garden. Here in Las Vegas, you can grow things all year round. You can have fruit trees and gardens, even if you only have a small spot. Many people here have zero-lot line yards, and wonder where to put a garden. I would encourage you to learn how to espalier fruit trees (grow them flat on a wall; this was done in castles to help provide food during times of siege). Also, you can grow lettuce and tomatoes, as well as many other things, in pots.

Plant a garden to reduce the effect of inflation on your household

What about baby?

Homemade Baby Food

Home Canning

Want to know how to can your own food?

The University of Georgia Cooperative Extension offers a free online canning class

The Ball Blue Book Recipes are online, as well as canning instructions:

Fresh Preserving

You can also buy the book:

Here is the USDA booklet's recipes online:

National Center for Home Food Preservation

and here is the book of the same:

Canning Tutorials

How to Can Citrus Fruits

Scroll down the page just a little to find it. They say you have to have grapefruit with each fruit to can it. This is not neccessary, and in fact will make all of your other fruit taste like grapefruit in the jar. I used their instructions (minus the grapefruit addition) and canned clementines.

The same site has a great list with tutorials:

How to can anything

A blog on canning and gardening with step by step canning instructions:

The Simple Woman's Cannery and Garden

Canning meats, etc.

Home Storage Skills

Make your own pectin

Canning Butter

Not a fruit or vegetable, but I'm including it here with the other canning information.

Violet and Dandelion Jellies

Apple Butter

Canning Suppliers

This company shipped my canner to me very quickly in the middle of canning season. I was impressed:

Beans

Cooking chart for COOKING dried beans using a pressure canner

Chart for CANNING dried beans using a pressure canner

Cooking beans in a pot

This link also includes a price comparison for using dried beans versus buying canned beans

Cooking Beans in a Crock Pot

Drying Fruits and Vegetables

You can buy dried fruits and vegetables (see the Grains page for sources in addition to buying locally). You can also dry food at home.

Drying Food at Home

Canning Tools

New to canning? Wondering what you need? Here's what I'm using:

I use this to can peaches and pears. You can just use a

for those if you want as well.

A water bath canner is good for canning jams and jellies, applesauce, and fruits.

This keeps your hands from getting burned while lifting hot jars.

You might not think this matters much, but it really helps to keep the top of the jars clean while you're canning, so that you can get a good seal. You'll still wipe the tops of the jars before putting lids on, but this will help. It also helps you to be a bit quicker when you're putting things into the jar (like boiling hot syrup!)

In order to safely can some items, such as vegetables and meats, you need to can using a pressure canner. This canner can also be used to cook things, so if you want to cook beans really quickly, or cook a tough, inexpensive cut of meat quickly, you can also use this for that. A 23-quart one is big enough to fit 7 quart jars.

This is wonderful for making applesauce! It is SO much faster than processing tiny little amounts in the blender! I have heard it's fantastic for grape juice, too. Hopefully I'll have enough grapes to try it out this year! It has different sized screens that you can order to make different things. The tomato strainer that it comes with (for making tomato sauce) works for applesauce as well. You'll need to order the grape spiral and screen if you want to do grape juice.