Learning to Can "Jar" Green Beans...

Soo.. like my previous Blog stated... I am a Yankee! So when our garden started to overrun our fridge~~ I had to call on the brilliance of my Mother In Law. I have never in my life "canned" anything. Did not even know there was a process.. never mind a special aluminum cooker canner!!! :) I tried to take pictures to document which was difficult and to work at the same time... Although Jim was home part of the time and helped quite a bit!!
The first thing to do was "pop" the corners off and break the green bean pod into about 3-4 pieces. Aubrey helped too :) Mema was DEFINITELY the fastest!!! The result was a ton of green beans to can!! Next step was to boil (clean) the jars and keep them warm. You can use your dish washer but ours was already running. SOOOO then you put the rinsed (4 or 5 times) green beans in the jars... You use this tool... HAVE no idea if it has a name~~ but it looks like an oversized butter knife with no jagged edges. Anywhoooo you use this to get some of the air bubbles out of the jars and add more beans until all the way to the top! THEN ... you take the lids (also boiled) on the top, but not too tight~ and put them in the canner cooker :) which holds 7 jars...

Then you wait to see steam coming out of the pipe line thingy :) (don't you love how knowledge-able i sound) and then you put this bobbly thing on.. pic below ;)Then you wait til the temperature reaches 250/15 for 15 minutes... you have to stay and watch and make sure you adjust the stove to not go over 250. After 15 minutes you move the cooker over and allow TIME to bring the temp down to zero!! That is what takes what seems LIKE FOREVER!!!

Then you carefully ~~ using another handy dandy canning tool~amajig... you pull out the cans and set them down~ somewhere where you can leave them without them moving for 24 hours. Which was hard for Aubs.. she wants to eat them!! :) OIY!!! more picking tomorrow to eat!! :)

The Temperature at the end to keep it at 250 went all the way down to level 4 on the stove!! :) flat top stoves are different than ones with eyes i guess