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!

Beans Beans the Magical Fruit

Heating beans in the oven

And on the stove....

More beans....

We had so many beans we had to start using large bowls.

All the empty jar boxes

Well, I'm sure some of you will remember that a few years ago I learned how to can beans. It was lots of fun, and there were beans everywhere. Roughly 5 pounds of dry beans = 15 cups (dry) and need 3 cups of water per cup of beans. So say 5 pounds of beans is 15 cups, and 45 cups of water = 14 jars with a few stray beans, and takes 2 canners to do. Then you hydrate them, cook them a little, put them in jars, and can them for 90 minutes. Well, those were very good beans, and very useful, especially because Justin loves beans. So we ate all of those, then I canned another 5 pounds, we ate all of those. We've been out of beans for a couple of months now, and I keep meaning to can them, and haven't.

So with Justin gone, mom and I decided it would be a good time to do a big project like that. We were going to can 10 pounds, which would be 4 canner loads roughly. Well, I grabbed the wrong bucket, and ended up with a 25 pound bag, instead of the 2 resealable 10 pound bags I was looking for. Plus I had a bag that was partially used so we were going to can those. I know this is too much info, but its part of the story I swear! Anyway, so it was about 35 pounds of beans. Well mom and I start washing beans, and we fill up our 2 pans that we were going to use, and then mom says "Let's just keep going" So we keep going, and going and going, and pretty soon we've washed 35 pounds of beans, and put them in every pot we could find. Now to use the math from up above that would be 105 cups of dry beans (roughly) and 315 cups, or 40 gallons if you prefer, of water. Let's just say - it was a sea of beans as far as the eye could see. We took pictures, but it just doesn't do it justice.

That was monday, we put them to soak, or soften. Then tuesday we set out canning. We used 5+ cases of quart jars, worked for 16 hours (until 2 am), and ended up with about 60 something quarts of canned beans. There actually were more beans 2 1/2 canners (15 jars or so) but we just couldn't do it. At 2 am we said enough, the chickens can eat the rest of the beans and went to bed. It was really fun, but lots of beans. If we ate 1 jar a week, we would have enough beans right now for more than a year. It was a lot of work, but at least it was done at one time instead of having to keep doing smaller batches throughout the year I guess. Now we just need to see how long they actually last! :D