Explain this to me....

See what I bought? That's the weighed gauge and an extra rack for the pressure canner. Common things that many canners buy, since they make the process a lot easier - the weighted gauge means you don't have to stand there and stare at the dial gauge on the canner to make sure it stays at the correct pressure (you still have to be within ear range, though), and the extra rack means I can safely double up on smaller jars.

So why is this a blog post? Because of where I bought them: Amazon.com

Not the Canadian version of Amazon, and not my local hardware store, even though many other people have managed to buy these items through their local stores from the same chain. Each store is independently operated, and the new owners of my local one apparently were the only ones unable to order these items for me. Oddly enough, they will find that they are also unable to sell me anything else in the future as well. Yes, I do hold grudges :)

So, being unable to find these locally, I went on-line. But guess what? Amazon.ca doesn't sell the regulator at all, and that was what I really wanted - the rack is just a bonus.

When I first looked, the only seller on Amazon.com didn't ship to Canada, but I recently looked again, and low and behold - a new seller with international shipping! Yeah!!

But wait: the cost. It has to be prohibitive, right?

The gauge, the rack and one other item, including all taxes, shipping, handling and border fees: $49.17. The third item (a jelly strainer) was over $7.00, so that's somewhere around $40 for the gauge and rack.

The rack alone at Amazon.ca?

$41.73 plus tax, shipping and handling.

I'm all for shopping locally, and trying to keep my money in Canada, but I'm not willing to sit still for highway robbery.

So my advice? If you are looking for items that you cannot find locally for a decent price, look at ordering from the USA. I refuse to feel guilty any longer for doing so, not when such vast price differences exist.

But one good thing: this prompted me to write my first ever review on Amazon.ca ;)

When life gives you lemons...

... preserve them! With salt, of course!

I've been wanting to try this for a while now, and lemons were on sale this week, so I hied me to the store to buy 10.  The recipe I was following said to cut off the ends, then quarter the lemons without cutting all the way through to the end, like this:

However, I found I couldn't get enough of them into the jar, so I ended up simply quartering them all the way through, then salting each quarter before smushing them into the quart jar. Of course, once I was done, I realized using a wide mouth jar might have made this a wee bit easier...

I was able to fit 7 lemons into one quart, and used one more for juice to fill the jar.

Now, all I have to do is wait....

Days of limes and oranges

Sunday was my one day "off" this week (renos are back in full swing!). So, of course, I decided to make marmalade. This was my first attempt at any jam/jelly type thing, so doing it on a day where nothing else was happening was a good thing. And if I hadn't had forgotten to take my brain with me when I went shopping, it would have gone soooo much better.

I had decided to make three different recipes, and thought I had all the ingredients on my list. And since all the recipes list the amount of sugar by volume, but it's sold by weight, I had to figure out how many cups in a package. I wondered a bit when every site I saw said there were only 4 cups in a 2 pound package, but since each site said the same thing...

(Notice my mistake yet?)

One recipe was for blood orange marmalade, since they were on sale for $2.00 a pound. So, I very nicely weighed out 3 pounds of them, wondering a bit when they completely filled a produce bag...

(See it now?)

I got the rest of the ingredients, a couple of other items, all fours packages of sugar, and headed to the checkout.

Where I almost fell over when the blood oranges rang up at over $14.

(Now?)

Yeah. That's it. I live in Canada, and have for my entire life. And we use the metric system, and have been for almost my entire life.

I apparently forgot this, and thus bought twice as much sugar and twice as many blood oranges as I needed.



At least when I'm wrong, I'm consistent...

I started with the easiest recipe Sunday morning, a four-fruit marmalade with naval oranges, lemons, limes and grapefruit.

Four-fruit marmalade

After that was done, I started on the first of the two batches of the blood orange marmalade.  It was a bit more labour intensive, but not too bad.

Blood orange marmalade

Needless to say, I was a bit tired after both those batches were done, and I wasn't in the mood to go back to the store when I realized I also didn't write down everything I needed for the third recipe. And by that point, I was re-thinking the effort required for that recipe, so I simply modified the first recipe by replacing the lime with another lemon, and two oranges with my last blood orange and one more grapefruit.

I also forgot to take a picture of it, so look back at the first one, and imagine it a bit more pink :)

Clockwise from top left: Blood Orange, Mixed-Fruit, Four-Fruit

The verdict? They are all tasty, but not perfect. Not bad, mind you, for my first attempt! But the lime peels in the first batch are still too hard and I find that recipe too sweet, the blood orange version didn't set completely, and the last batch is a bit too tart. In the future, I'll make both the four-fruit and blood orange versions again, reducing the sugar a bit for the first, and cooking longer for the second.

But, of course, since I ended up with 15 pints of marmalade, I won't be making any more for quite a while....

It's a good thing I like marmalade!!

Swap meet, canning style!

Yes, you read that correctly - I went to my first ever canning swap Sunday afternoon. It was organized by Tiffany, the writer behind "Eating Niagara", a great blog for anyone interested in our local food resources.

It was held at a local restaurant (who stayed open at a time they are normally closed, just for the event - thanks, Rise Above Bakery!), and set up so that you got one ticket for every item you brought, and could exchange the tickets for items you wanted. I think that's a good set up, since items that are normally canned in small lots (like jellies) can be a lot more expensive to make, as compared to things like tomato sauce or other items traditionally canned in quarts. For me, I'm quite happy with what I ended up with!

I traded 2 jars each of my bread & butter pickles, chili sauce and hot salsa for tomato and basil pasta sauce, mulberry jelly, cranberry ketchup, red eye hot sauce, Rosewood's Wildflower honey, and four rolls, still warm from the oven. One roll didn't make it past supper, and oooh, was it good!

I was really surprised at the variety of canned goods there, in addition to other items: home made soap, the fresh baked bread (in addition to the rolls, there were 4-5 other loaves), herbs and perennial plants (Egyptian onions and Jerusalem artichokes), knitted washcloths, and I'm sure some things I'm forgetting.

I was also surprised at the variety of people. Attended by around 30 people, there was a range of ages, from the very young to, well, older than me, and a surprising number of men - and some of whom came on their own, and weren't dragged along by their wives. I know it sounds sexist, but so often things like this tend to attract mainly women, so it's a nice change to see the other side actively involved!

I am so glad I went - and thanks again to Tiffany, for having the initiative to organize this event! Now, to start thinking about what to make for next year...