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I did some canning last Tuesday. More harvesting Wed. And then harvesting and canning again yesterday. I am not talking about huge quantities 5-6 pints each day but is time consuming for sure! I will have to check some more of the tomatoes I have already picked to see if they ripened up enough for canning.

What my wife and I are not eating with meals I have been canning. Have you ever pressure canned? I want to cook up a pasta sauce that includes ground beef and pressure can it. How about a tomato zuke mix pressure canned would it be worth while doing?

I’ve never done any pressure canning. To be perfectly honest the idea of using a pressure cooker or canner actually scares the dickens out of me.

When I make sauces including meat I always freeze them. Pickles and jellies/jams are the only things I have ever canned. Everything else I either freeze or dry.

I think pressure canning pasta sauce with meat would work. I have pressure canned before and it is easy. Just follow the directions!

As for tomato and zucchini, the acid in the tomatoes should protect the zucchini. I wouldn't pressure cook that.

I've been using my pressure canner quite a bit lately. The local grocer had chicken on sale for $0.39 and I bought 85 lbs. I froze half and canned the other half. Turned out really well ... great for making soup since I canned it in a really nicely spiced and flavored broth, but also very useful when I need to throw something together quick. I like to take a box of Tuna Helper and use chicken instead of tuna. Add some garden peas and mushrooms and you have a good, hot, filling and very quick meal if you add a small side salad and a piece of garlic bread. But I digress ...

Do you have the Ball Blue Book of Preserving? If so, all of the directions you need for pressure canning are contained therein, but if you have any other questions, I'd be more than happy to try to help. I've been canning tomato sauce this past week, but haven't gotten around to doing any containing meat, so the hot water canner has been adequate.

I'm giving serious consideration to canning some speckled butter beans and purple hull peas this year, although I've never seen it done. I usually freeze those. But, after being blanched before freezing, they never produce pot liquor quite as good as they do when they haven't been blanched. Sooooo, I'm going to put some up using the pressure canning method and see how they turn out.

My wife canned thousands of jars of veggies and fruits over the years but we gave away two canners last year and hundreds of quart jars and all small mouth jars to the Cancer thrift store. We kept just some pints and all the 1/2 pints for Albacore Tuna however I have a revolt on my hands as she says NO MORE Tuna? We kept this All American Pressure Cooker as it is the Rolls of the bunch...