Surprise, Surprise!

G

glp

Active member
I got home from work yesterday("essential business)...as if they all aren't) to find the canner on the stove, slowly giving up its internal pressure. Inside were mucho Ball jars of diced potatoes. Seems my wife decided that some of the remaining crop from last year were going to get preserved for later use. They will go well with the canned moose meat we have, for fried taters or whatever. Her desire to be prepared has been rekindled by a microscopic virus. Lessons to be learned I guess.

If the availability of garden vegetable seeds is any indication, there will be a lot more V gardens planted this year. Hope folks have seen the light and continue on with this old tradition.
 
glp said:
I got home from work yesterday("essential business)...as if they all aren't) to find the canner on the stove, slowly giving up its internal pressure. Inside were mucho Ball jars of diced potatoes. Seems my wife decided that some of the remaining crop from last year were going to get preserved for later use. They will go well with the canned moose meat we have, for fried taters or whatever. Her desire to be prepared has been rekindled by a microscopic virus. Lessons to be learned I guess.

If the availability of garden vegetable seeds is any indication, there will be a lot more V gardens planted this year. Hope folks have seen the light and continue on with this old tradition.
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Built an above the ground veggie garden and plumbed water to it. Planted the middle of March. Checked my receipts yesterday. A $1000 investment for $50 worth of veggies.
 
All my investments should be so good.
The Baptist farmer across the road says to plant three times what you need. One share for God. One share for the insects. One share for you.
 
Knew a guy that grew LOTS flowers for the Farmers Market. All Organic. I asked him what he does about the bugs eating his flowers? He said "I grow enough or both of us"!!:)
 
Butch Lambert said:
Built an above the ground veggie garden and plumbed water to it. Planted the middle of March. Checked my receipts yesterday. A $1000 investment for $50 worth of veggies.
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early '70's, little 90acre hobbyfarm in MN with "a 5acre garden" (actually only 150'X300ft so NOT EVEN an acre)..... but still.... rows and rows, and rows of everything imaginable because in MN stuff leaps out of the ground if you spit......and my parents moved there from Yacolt WA where the only thing that grows is rhubarb.....

I detested the garden.

One year the root cellar caved in from too much rain. We had to "go shopping"......

Mom brought me along to carry the heavy stuff.

I hove a couple honkin' sacks of potatoes up onto the counter and watched the cashier ring up "2@.31"

I now live on 80acres near a thriving metropolis, I have tractors and equipment and a monstrous BCS garden tiller as well as a 6ft 3-pt tiller for the tractor and in 20yrs on this property we haven't grown so much as a carrot ....

And taters is up to 31 cents a pound.....

tempting???


NOT!


Far as that whole self-sufficiency" thing??? Or the prepper thing??? "Buggin' out?".....don't need to bug out, my driveway's a mile long....My plan is that when the SHTF we'll eat the trespassers....
 
glp said:
I got home from work yesterday("essential business)...as if they all aren't) to find the canner on the stove, slowly giving up its internal pressure. Inside were mucho Ball jars of diced potatoes. Seems my wife decided that some of the remaining crop from last year were going to get preserved for later use. They will go well with the canned moose meat we have, for fried taters or whatever. Her desire to be prepared has been rekindled by a microscopic virus. Lessons to be learned I guess.
Click to expand...

Greg, your post brought back some memories. My Mom and Grandma used to can potatoes and beef. "You kids stay out of the kitchen!", was the phrase of the day. Those old pressure cookers looked for all the world like something out of H.G. Wells' nightmares....clamps, gauges, steam and all that creaking and groaning. I was fascinated!

The payoff came when Mom would send young Alan down to the dirt basement to fetch a couple jars of potatoes and beef for supper. The tastiness that emerged from those blue tinged Mason jars is what childhood memories are made of.

Thanks for the trip back, Greg! :cool: -Al
 
Only good thing I remember about the garden was WORMS, because when we finished weeding we could go fishing. Cane pole, Bobbers and worms for bull heads, always made a dandy dinner ( ya we had to clean them are selves but that what's pliers were made for.)
 
Couple memories: When living in Alaska during the 70s we bought a house from people that raised rabbits in cages. We dug the ground and planted a garden. It sure grew fast, but mommy moose and twins ate the tops of our potatoes and strawberries.

My Grandmother canned a lot of different food. She had a storm cellar in Okla. where they lived of railroad ties and dirt. That is where the canned food was stored. She had jelly and when she opened it and spooned out the greenish-blue out of the jar and then we used the rest. Maybe the penicillin is why I'm hardly ever sick.
 
Memories

Al Nyhus..Does this look like something you remember? Belonged to my Grandma. She passed on in 1998.

Relatives, that I didn’t know existed, converged on the old homestead, looking for anything of value. I managed to come away with this old pressure cooker and a few other antiques, before everything was picked over.

She had three of these, that she used every year for canning, until she got up in age. She was 99 when she died. I remember, she used to have all three of these cookers, on the stove, going at the same time. She canned everything. I used to like the canned peaches, that came from the peach trees outback, on the Farm.
Those were the days. Haven’t had canned peaches like that since,

Its a Burpee Aristocrat Cooker. Made by the Burpee can sealer Co. of Barrington,Ill. No longer in business.


nOZH7FJ.jpg
 
Chicken

Chicken we canned about a week ago. Never can figure why this stuff goes sideways.
 

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My favorite pressure cooker meal was cabbage and meatballs.Always reminds me of home.

Mort
 
Chism G said:
......... I managed to come away with this old pressure cooker and a few other antiques, before everything was picked over.
Click to expand...

Antiques? ANTIQUES?? My wife and sisters have about ten of those between them..... couple in my house.....

venison
salmon
beef
chickens
pears
peaches
snapbeans
relishes and spreads.....

I hope they never become antiques in my house :) if home'ade preserves ever go to antique status in our families we'll know the Good Times Are Over For Good.....
 
Here's another one that I grew up with that y'all's probably never heard of...... Mehu-Maija

https://www.touchoffinland.com/coll...pro-stainless-steel-steamer-juicer-mehu-maija




edited to add.......

Note the note in the advert. "This units design is based off the original Mehu Maija, which is now discontinued."

All ours are old, some might even say "antique" LOL

But for canning jams and jellies??? Manalive..... chokecherry and plum and jalapeno' jellies........ huckleberry and lowbush blueberries for winter pies......mountain blackberry, Loganberry, Marionberry, Himalaya's.....

Strawberries are normally made into freezer jam, but the rest of the stuff requires canning....




Ohhh yeahhhh, and since we're now eating only meat my wife's been pressure-cooking roasts and briscuits.....


ooops



gettin' hungry!
 
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Chism G said:
Al Nyhus..Does this look like something you remember? Belonged to my Grandma. She passed on in 1998.
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Pretty similar! There were usually two of the aluminum-ish beasts huffin' and puffin' on the stove top. The one I remember most was like this:

ZVbpXy7l.jpg
 
Al Nyhus said:
Pretty similar! There were usually two of the aluminum-ish beasts huffin' and puffin' on the stove top. The one I remember most was like this:

ZVbpXy7l.jpg
Click to expand...



I remember the huffing and puffing(rhythmic pressure relief). Hard to say how old mine is. I’m 77 and it looked old when I first saw it in Grand Ma’s kitchen. The rubber seal in the top is cracked. I never used it.
Kept it because it belonged to Grandma. May try to restore it, if I can locate the parts.


Glenn
 
When I was just a tad, my Mom's pressure cooker blew a pressure plug. It made a nice round hole in the ceiling, about 6mm.

She would cook a pot roast in it. Made it so tender you could cut it with a fork. My Dad hated it. Said it cooked all the nastiness right into it. I loved it myself.

I well remember the rhythmic putzing sound it made, nearly 60 years later.
 
My paternal Grandparents

were both from the old country...Poland. I never met my grandmother(she died when my father was 13). My grandfather always had a garden...always. Just like so many from whence he came. After he died, when I was about 14, my father and one of his brothers and me were at the house cleaning it out. I went into the cellar and there against one wall was a massive set of shelves stacked with so may jars of canned vegetables I couldn't count. It dawned on me that they all were done by my grandmother. I can still see them all in my mind's eye.

Fast forward to about 8 years ago. I was at the funeral of a cousin, and afterward we were invited to the family home of some friends of my fathers brother for refreshments. The couple were Polish immigrants that my uncle took under his wing when the showed up in town and they still remain friends of the family.

They lived in town on a residential street. Most homes were two story, two family and on small lots, perhaps 75 feet wide. Looked like they were built in the 20s. Each had a small lawn on one side and a driveway on the other. Most lawns of all the structures were neatly mowed or festooned with flowers. On the lawn side of the home we were at, neither lawn nor flowers. Right there in the middle of the city every bit of lawn was planted as a vegetable garden.

Reminded me of my great aunt on my fathers side...she broke her arm when she was 82...she fell out of an apple tree while pruning it. Where their house, orchard and garden stood is now a CVS or Wallgreens. Old, sound habits never die for the enlightened :)
 
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