Canning

I much prefer freezing to canning, but in a "SHTF" scenario the canned food will last much longer when the power goes out. Of course I don't care about that; my own expiration date is looming so the jelly will probably outlive me at this point.

Speaking of freezing food... I'm trying to use up the meat in our freezer and get that down to a reasonable amount. I haven't bought meat in a while unless there's a really great sale going on.

I froze some vacuum sealed "zoodles" (zuchinni noodles) a few months ago from the garden and I need to get some of those out and see how they hold up when cooked. I might have to hit them with the immersion blender and have zuchinni soup.

 

I have done both. I think I like the canned better because I add lemon juice and a pinch of salt to them and the frozen ones stay naturelle.
Lots of wise people on here for you @John Brunner

 

We don't freeze tomatoes except as an interim thing, and we don't do that much. The prepared sauce or prepared soup and such is much quicker to use when you are ready. The frozen tomatoes can be canned at a convenient time, then the sauce can be used when time is tighter. That is just preference. We haven't tried freezing zucchini noodles @Beth Gallagher. Let us know how it works. Our zucchini varieties usually store pretty well whole, unprepared, and we spiralize them at the time of use.

 

By this I mean in general, not specifically tomatoes. Actually, I don't freeze tomatoes since they are pretty much available year round. I like canned tomatoes better than frozen.

 

I was wondering about that, too. Zucchini isn't a root vegetable but it doesn't keep very long in my fridge; maybe a week.

 

The storage ability of zucchini depends on the variety. Many of the old heirloom zucchini varieties store quite well. In fact, some can be used either as a summer or winter squash. We have a de facto root cellar in our heated garage against the outside wall in a far corner. Potatoes and beets are stored there, along with celeriac and turnips/rutabagas when we have them. Carrots we store in a refrigerator. Storage tomatoes and squash of all kinds we store on shelves in a ~55 F. environment and we still have tomatoes and summer squash from August/September stored there. Winter squashes will store into early summer of the following year usually, while the summer squashes last until march or so.

If you want to try zucchini that store pretty well for us, try Costata romanesco (a bush squash that gets very large and is reputed to be the most flavorful zucchini) or Trombocino (a long vining quash that grows well for us on a trellis or even in a large tomato cage in a container. Your environments and climates are different from ours, so I can't say how long they will store for you.

We do have a real root cellar, but we have trouble with rodent control there, so we no longer use it for much.

 

Maybe, but it would be risky. The folks who owned our house before us had a "freezer box" outside where they stored many things frozen over winter, but we never used it. Caches--you may have seen them on TV--are used in the Bush for meat storage, and they are on stilts to keep out critters. We had sub-standard winter squashes stored outside in a box; Moose broke into it and ate them before we could feed them to our chickens. Moose eat anything we have outside that they can get into. One winter (when we had goats and sheep), moose broke through the back wall (facing the woods and not easily accessible in winter) of or hay barn and pulled bales of hay through the hole, leaving only a hollowed-out stack of bales. It was only a shell, and the pile of bales was hollow inside. Small rodents--voles and shrews--and large "rodents" (moose)--also called "swamp donkeys" get into all kinds of things. And then there are bears....

 

I had a look at that @Yvonne Smith it says save to kindle library but is that’s an app ….to download ….dose it save on Amazon

Thanks

 

I’m sorta exhausted from processing apricots from our tree ….we started picking them the first week of Dec …picked the last of them and binned them yesterday .

32 jars preserved
Dried 40 kg ( fresh weight) ….
Stewed …. 5 kg for freezer …cause I didn’t want to get the canner out again

 

that is a lot of preserves, and apricots are very good for us in many ways.