{"id":4181,"date":"2012-05-28T15:21:18","date_gmt":"2012-05-28T20:21:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/?p=4181"},"modified":"2012-05-28T15:21:18","modified_gmt":"2012-05-28T20:21:18","slug":"first-time-canning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/?p=4181","title":{"rendered":"First time canning: Pickled beets"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/beets-1.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/beets-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"beets-1\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-4182\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I shouldn&#8217;t act as though it&#8217;s some kind of feat to can food, because of course people have been doing it for years. But today was the first time I&#8217;ve ever tried it. It also was the first time I&#8217;ve ever had a good enough garden to support canning.<\/p>\n<p>These were red beets, mixed with chioggia beets, which are striped. That&#8217;s why the color varies. And for whatever reason, the beets lost color in the pressure cooker. Something the vinegar does, maybe? I pulled all two rows of beets from the garden. The voles had ruined a third of them. Ken is already tilling the now-empty rows that the beets were in to plant more beans and corn. Later on in the season, I plan to can as many green beans and tomatoes as I possibly can. I&#8217;ll freeze the corn.<\/p>\n<p>Strangely enough, the canning itself is not the most tedious and time-consuming part of the process. It&#8217;s the preparation &#8212; pulling the beets, hosing them down to remove the dirt, washing them again in the kitchen sink, boiling them for a while so that the skins will slide off, and then, finally, skinning them and slicing them. From the time I started pulling beets this morning until I took the cans from the pressure cooker was about six hours.<\/p>\n<p>To keep the heat and steam of the pressure cooker out of the kitchen, I put it out on the deck, using a propane-fired cooker. The temperature hit 90 degrees today, and the air conditioning still hasn&#8217;t been used so far the season. So keeping the heat out of the kitchen really helps.<\/p>\n<p>Now I just hope they all seal properly&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/beets-2.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/beets-2.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"beets-2\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-4182\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/beets-3.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/beets-3.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"beets-3\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-4182\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I shouldn&#8217;t act as though it&#8217;s some kind of feat to can food, because of course people have been doing it for years. But today was the first time I&#8217;ve ever tried it. It also was the first time I&#8217;ve ever had a good enough garden to support canning. These were red beets, mixed with &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/?p=4181\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;First time canning: Pickled beets&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,9,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-food","category-relocalization","category-sustainable-living"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4181\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}