Things I have canned since Thanksgiving. Also, I baked.

So, I bought two turkies for Thanksgiving, whic is far more than meets our Thanksgiving dinner needs. We can get along with a 10 pound bird and still have a few days of turkey sandwhich and turky cassarole and all the other ongoing turkey dinners that happen once the main feast is history. It's just M and me, nowdays.

But, at about 60¢ a pound, the brilliant frugal opportunity for lots of meals in jars was not to be passed up.  So I fired up the pressure canner.

And, of course, other meats went on seasonal sales, so other things got canned along the way, as well. And, of course, I acquired a few extra turkey carcasses along the way, because people who love me and invite me to share a post-holiday meal also offer me the still useful carcasses if they are not planning on using them.

So I canned a lot. I'm still canning. This year, the holiday season has been the canning season.

This post is meant mostly to list what I made--I have actually begun to forget because there were just so many things. I don't want to have to go through my jars every time I want to recall. I also need to make notes about what I did because I do not want to forget when I want to replicate something that is successful.

1. Chili (ground beef, and the regular USDA recipe with mushrooms added and a mix of green and jalapeno peppers)
2. Turkey white bean chili (Canning for Dummies recipe using turkey versus chicken)
3. Northwoods chili (which was the same chili recipe as above with turkey and Northwoods Fire seasoning swapped for beef and chili powder)
4. Pork (shoulders were on sale) chili verde
5. Curry Turkey Mushroom starter*
6. Tikka Masala turkey

• This was a huge winner for M; it's turkey, mushrooms, and a canning recipe for Tikka Masala. The fresh ginger really makes it. I did not have a garum masala so I used this recipe to make it, and this worked nicely.  I enjoyed this straight up, but it can be finished with coconut milk (or other dairy/nondairy thing you prefer) for more creaminess and a closer-to-Asian-Indian taste.

7. Turkey soup*

• Version 1: turkey broth, carrots, potatoes, peas, corn, onion, turkey.
• Version 2: turkey bone broth, mushroom base, turkey, corn, peas, onions, carrots, salt, pepper, garlic. 
• Version 3: turkey bone broth, turkey, potatoes, carrots, celery, onions, salt, pepper. 

8. Turkey in broth
9. Turkey Pot Pie starter

• This is based on this chicken pot pie starter recipe. However, I do not use clear-gel in anything. When I'm prepping this for eating, I add flour to the milk and then add the milk-flour combination to the chicken pot pie starter. I am also just as likely to serve this over noodles or served as a cottage pie as put it in a double crust.

10. Zuppa Toscana soup starter (swapping turkey for the usual meat)
11. "Italian Sausage" and Lentil Soup

• This recipe suggests putting the raw ingredients in a jar, but I preferred to make the soup and then jar it; the lentils were only slightly cooked before going into the jar, to keep them from becoming mush.  This worked out fine for us. I swapped turkey and an added a spoon of Italian sausage seasoning for actual Italian sausage

12.  Turkey Unstuffed Cabbage Soup
13. Split Pea (turkey and a little liquid smoke to sub for ham)
14. Sweet and sour pork (included some jalapeno as well as green pepper)

• I'm hugely frustrated because I can't find the recipe I JUST USED to can this, so I will note that it was a raw pack recipe using pork, fresh pineapple, onions, green pepper, salt, and water. It was much less complicated than the other sweet/sour recipes for canning that I found, and it had no spices to speak of, which I thought could be good for allowing different spice blends to be used on the day one cooks it up for actual eating. 

15. Modified meatball soup

• I did not make the meatballs the way I would usually do for this treasured family recipe, since they call for eggs. However, this lovely blog has an older recipe for canning meatballs that does include egg. I am comfortable with canning some recipes that were once approved but which are no longer USDA standard; this recipe looks comfortable to me. Your mileage may vary.**

16. Turkey Cacciatore (based on this, but with red wine added and turkey, of course)
17. Pepper Mushrooms in Tomato Sauce (because I bought way too many)

I had different grades of broth from the turkeys this year; there was the broth that just came off the baked turkey, the broth that came from cooking the carcass in the instant pot the first time, and the broth that came from cooking the carcass in the instant pot a second time. I just did not want to go to the trouble of roasting the bones or cooking the bones for a week, I just wanted serviceable broths to provide additional nutritional value and a base flavor that was going to blend well with the veggies and spices. I ended up using the broth that just came off the turkey for recipes that had beans in it, and the second-instant-pot broth for recipes without beans. The first-instant-pot cooking broth got mixed as needed for either application, but the more cooked the bones were, the more calcium is in the broth, and it is my understanding that calcium can toughen beans. If I am wrong in this, no harm done, but if I am right, then, no tough lentils, white beans, kidney beans, or pinto beans.

I also did some baking. It's pretty clear that my oven really can not bake anything that requires timing because it's old and whatever temperature regulation system, whatever heat-keeping materials it is constructed with are done for. I don't know if I want to see if it can be refurbished or if I just want to buy something new. In any event, the julekake and family-specific version of Irish soda bread took so long to cook that the flour browned in the bread. It's toasted now. Still tasty and edible, but not the lovely breads they were supposed to be,  I made sandbakklers and as I do not own the tins for it, I usually roll them flat and cut them, but this year, I rolled them in wax paper,  chilled them completely, sliced them to about 1/8th of an inch, and baked them that way. I like that better. And Aunt Jo was right; they really need to be made with butter, not margarine or, heaven forbid, vegetable shortening.

Side remarks:

*Lots of things are made based on the USDA soup instructions.  It's a soup engine rather than a recipe; you use whatever single ingredients for which the USDA provides processing times. However, I do not like the thin product produced by the recipe/engine, so I usually fill the jars completely and process 75 min for pints and 90 for quarts.


**Because this is a public post and the canning community is full of people who are willing to fight with you about USDA canning versus NON-USDA canning practices (and my ghod, you don't want to see that argument play out between, say, an American USDA devotee and a German "Look, it's not my country, it's not my government, and who the hell are you to tell me what to do, anyway?" NON-USDA devotee), I will emphasize that meatball recipes that are USDA compliant only have the meat and some spices in them. If you are uncomfortable with any non-USDA tested recipes, don't follow this one. I make decisions for me, you make decisions for you, and any comment that tells me I am going to kill my family because OMG BOTULISM will be promptly deleted, because I don't need the drama.


Man, this is much longer than I meant it to be. It's a good thing this is not a lifestyle blog, because this would have been about 20 different entries, one for each recipe and a few for the miscellaneous comments I made for my record keeping.