Addicted to Canning!

Category: frugal living

  • What to do with canned beans?

    So, you’ve been following along with me while I have canned a whole load of different beans. Great! Now you have about 16 pint jars of beans! What do you do with them now?!? Well, apart from the amazingly awesome vegan bean burgers, how about hummus! No, this isn’t your tired old blah store bought…

  • Easy canning dried beans

    Canning dry beans can seem like a real pain. The rinsing, sorting, soaking overnight, changing the water rigmarole. There’s the “quick cook” method – boil for 2 minutes, soak in the hot boil water for 1 hour, drain, fresh water, bring back to a boil – pfft, what a pain! So here’s the super easy…

  • Eat real food

    As I read more about health and nutrition, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that a lot of what is wrong with people’s health in the “western world” is the food we are eating. Our grandparents mainly ate what would today be considered a semi-vegetarian diet: fresh, local, seasonal fruit and vegetables, cheese, butter, relishes…

  • Pressure canning – beans

    Beans are a powerful ally in living frugally. They have the best “bang for the buck” in terms of nutritional return for money: insoluble and soluble fiber, high in protein, complex carbohydrates, folate, and iron. Once you get a stockpile of dried and canned beans in your pantry you are opening up new vistas of…

  • Make your own yoghurt

    It’s stupidly easy, laughably cheap, and takes next to no hands-on time. 1 quart (946ml) milk (any kind but not “ultra-high pasteurised”/UHP or “ultra heat treated”/UHT) 1/4 to 1/2 cup non-fat dry milk (optional) 2 tablespoons existing yoghurt with live cultures You can easily scale this up – I made a gallon batch, added 1…

  • Build in flavour

    While making a turkey pot pie with the last of my Christmas leftovers, I realised an important point. Dishes like pot pies rely on building in flavour at every step of the recipe – you simmer the chicken (or turkey carcass in this case), then use the broth to cook the veggies. This builds flavour…

  • Red beans and rice

    So you have taken care of your leftovers in a frugal manner and are looking for a dish which can soak them up and turn into something really tasty as well as being laughably cheap? Red beans and rice! A Creole favourite, it uses simple basic ingredients which you should already have in your pantry…

  • leftovers

    Ah, Thanksgiving. One of the leading causes of leftovers along with Christmas! But leftovers is where the home canner can really shine. The turkey carcass? Boil it up to make a bone stock and put the squeeze on it. Same with the leftover veggies, you can put them up for later use. You could add…

  • Vinegar, the unsung hero

    Why do I call vinegar the unsung hero? Because of its many uses… Cleaner White vinegar (also called distilled vinegar, also called acetic acid) in a 1:1 mix with tap water is a very effective cleaner and steriliser. Use instead of bleach to clean stove tops, windows, bathrooms, and so on.  Be careful with tiling…

  • Fast food is cheaper – right?

    Well… no. Not at all. I recently bought a 9.5lb ham for about $10 including tax. I simmered it for 4 hours, making it literally fall-off-the-bone tender. I stripped the meat off the bone, dropped the bone back in the pot, added a little white vinegar, and simmered the result for 2 hours. I pressure-canned…