Thursday, October 30, 2008

Holy Pinto Beans Batman!

Clean jars ready to go
Washing the great northern beans

Boiling water, and heating up the first canner

Mya wanting to know what we were doing

Beans measured out ready to go

Mom washing beans
Mya looking at me like "You've got to be kidding me - there must be food here somewhere!"

Beans with boiling water.
Up close and personal with the great northern beans

And the black beans
Half way through, this is the first batch cooling.
Rinsing the chili beans. They were really pretty colored

Boiling lots of water to pour on the beans
Here's the beans measured out, ready for the boiling water and their lids.

Another of the beans in their jars....

Mya the helper dog. She's been very concerned that she's being deprived treats, because we never spend that much time in the kitchen withouth making something that she gets a taste of. Canning is kind of a new concept to her. She was just sure we were hiding food from her. She kept bringing her dog balls and alien to "trade" for whatever we had. I think we ended up with 5 balls and an alien this afternoon.
Happily canning away

Tada! 28 more quarts. The ones in front, the multi colored, are the chili bean mix

You can really see the three types of beans in this picture. The really dark jars are the black beans
Another view of beans.


Well, see we had the great bean canning on tuesday, and wednesday I cleaned the kitchen and wrote about it. Then this afternoon, I still had the canners up stairs here because they weren't dry enough to put away yesterday. Well, I was talking to Justin's mom about canning beans, and she asked me how I do it, so I told her, and she said that there is an easier way to do it, but just putting dry beans in a jar, and pouring boiling water over them, then processing. Much less mess, much less time, much less everything except finished product. So I got really excited and thought, well hey the canners are still out, and the jars are clean, so what the heck! Nothing like canning another 28 jars of beans. Only this time I thought I'd try some other types of beans. I canned great white northern beans, some black beans, and some "chili bean mix" that we've had for a while (its kidney beans, red beans, pinto beans, and black beans all mixed together). So today we did the extra 28 jars of beans, about 14-15 pounds of beans. All in all that makes 83 quarts of beans all canned up ready to go. It will be fun though. A lot of time saving for dinners. Just mix in a little meat, and seasoning, and voila! dinner! Fun fun!

4 comments:

Brian & Charlotte Carper said...

And quick Christmas gifts for those last minute people who drop by, like scrap booking sisters or nursery moms or home teachers.... or they are a wonderful homemade gift for siblings - like if you had a brother that lived in a city who didn't have a canner and yet LOVED beans a lot... I'm thinking "Happy Christmas" ! ! !

The Rhiens said...

This method looks MUCH easier, less messy and less time consuming. You'll have to try a jar of both sometime soon and let us all know if there is a difference in how they turned out. I'm curious.

83 quarts! Wow! Impressive!

Earlene

Anonymous said...

I so enjoy your pictures pf cooking, canning and grow the food.
Such an easier way to do it.
Lovw granma Marilyn

Anonymous said...

Holy cow I'm impressed!!! Is it really worth it though?? We didn't realize we planted pinto beans in our garden & we got tons of them, but we haven't known what to do with them. We should have called you guys.
Those are some pretty colored beans though!