Friday, September 18, 2009

Canning and Vulnerability

There is nothing like knowing new people are checking out my blog to make me feel like a total dork for some reason. Please tell me it's not just me? Not that there is anything wrong with dorks..... I remember, years ago, hearing the phrase "dorks rule the world." It was said with such fire and fondness (and in the moment, such marksmanship... oh youth) that it seared a permanent spot in/on my brain and is something I am forever grateful to have heard. Pass it on. Green, red, gold: Green Zebra, San Marzano, Taxi tomatoes

Anyway... I have a few photos and a really cool finding although it may not be a new finding for anyone else I'm feeling like a genius for it. But then I also think I must be a genius every time I misplace my keys since geniuses, in case you didn't know it, are known to be absentminded. Hence the term: Absentminded genius. You knew that was coming, right?

This is only my second year of canning tomatoes (thank you Marlyn for the inspiration last year!), so I have had to buy canned tomato sauce this year. I know, I know. We don't really use a ton of it, but when we have I have saved the jars to use for food storage and hopeful canning. Today I went to use them and while a regular mouth canning lid fit just fine, the typical screw band didn't fit at all as it has completely different threads (which my construction husband pointed out to me when I said WTF is wrong with this F-ing thing?? in frustration and you know we wonder where our 3 year old gets it... jeeeeesh). So this typical jar of sauce:

With this typical lid:

Is usable! I put the canning lid on the clean surface of a filled jar and then firmly screwed the original lid (above) down over it, then processed it and PRESTO! It worked! I had to really carefully unscrew the lid because it does catch the canning top a bit, but it worked perfectly. I should add this is for water-bath processing only, I haven't looked into how they might hold up in a pressure canner.

3 comments:

JJElias said...

Well...I certainly learned something today! Thanks for the tip.

Marlyn said...

Cool on reusing the jars! And your tomatoes look gorgeous!

All the store bought jars we have here have or had bugs in them! The girls love collecting bugs!

Shauna said...

That first pic is a beauty! Awesome that you can reuse the old jars.