Friday, January 8, 2010

Keeping busy and productive


This is a picture of my turkey deep fryer kettle.  Guess what is in it?  Mixed dry beans that have been soaking.  Did you know if you soak your beans for 12-24hrs it makes them more digestable? 

The family helped me sort through 5 different dry beans.  We put baby lima, red kidney, pinto, black turtle, tiny white beans and black eyed peas in this mix.

I took them out of the kettle and rinsed them in the colander a little at a time.

Then I put them in the jars with a half teaspoon salt in each jar.

Loaded up both canners.  Boy I love those canners!  I can do 21 qts. at one time with these two.  I ended up with 28 qts as I had enough to do one more small canner load.


There we have 28 qts. of dried beans all cooked and ready for some instant meals!  The last 7 qts. that I canned I added some chili powder, cumin, and onion powder in addition to the salt in those.  Makes them kind of a chili bean flavor.  I can open a couple of jars, add some browned ground beef to it and some homemade tomato sauce and diced tomatoes and garlic and there is supper!  Add a pan of corn bread and I have instant dinner.  Well that is what we call "fast food" around our place anyway.  : )

Next thing to do is making jams and jellies from all those berries and fruit I put in the freezer last summer.

2 comments:

jarh2o said...

Thank you for your blog I enjoy it a lot.. I see you have what looks like a gas stove in your kitchen. We are thinking about switching from electric. Do you have any recommendations or thoughts on the subject.. Thank You.

Deborah Swinson said...

Hi jarh2o! I am glad you enjoy my blog. I love cooking with gas. The good thing about it is when you shut the burner off, it doesn't stay hot for a long time like an electric stove does. I like using a gas stove for canning, as it it easier to adjust the heat to keep it steady while canning.
This stove I bought at Sears. It has the some neat features that I like, but wasn't that expensive. It has a power burner that is bigger and much hotter than your normal burners, then it has two regular ones, and a small one for simmering. In addition to those it has a long oval center burner that you can put a grill or griddle on it. I got one of those for Christmas this year and it is great for cooking steaks indoors and for making lots of pancakes at once. Yep! I love my gas stove. One thing you must remember when switching from electric to gas, the bottom drawer is your broiler, NOT a storage drawer. The flame is under the oven, so that is where your broiler is on gas stoves.

Plus, when the power goes out I can still use the burners to cook with. The electric ignite won't work, but you can use a BBQ lighter to light them in that case.