cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/49982126

Fair warning, I made the app in the screenshots, so take the plug for what it is.

August is nearly here and I've got ten big tomato plants out back, all of them loaded with green ones. Three weeks from now they'll come in at once, same as every year.

The jars go down to the basement, the freezer fills up with green beans and sweet corn and shredded zucchini and pesto cubes, and by midwinter I've got no idea what's still down there or when any of it got put up. The stuff in front gets eaten and the stuff behind it just sits.

So I built an app. I know that's not everyone's cup of tea and a notebook on the shelf works fine for plenty of people, but I'm hyper organized and I like knowing what's where across all the different spots I keep things. A notebook was never going to tell me I've still got 14 pints of sauce from last August.

Stuff it does:

• everything gets a location, so the basement shelves and the chest freezer aren't one giant list
• canned date and expiration on each batch, and it nags me before something ages out
• barcode scanning, so the lids and pectin and salt get counted with everything else
• days of supply per category
• offline, no account, no analytics, CSV export if you want out

It's called BeaglePrep, Android only. Free tier is 75 items, not a trial that runs out. Pro's $4.99 once, no subscription.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.beagle.inventory

Good luck with your own glut. I'll be in the comments if anyone's got questions.

Decided to strain it this time. Made less because of that, and the fact a number of the strawberries were sad and had to be thrown away. But it's very pretty! Prettier in person!

I finally figured out exactly which burner and pot to get a nice simmer going, but I can't use the big big pot. Alas. Smaller batches it is! I used cheesecloth this time, so it's less cloudy overall!

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/47089104

Price of Great Value pintos beans per 15.5 oz can: 86¢. Price of 4 pounds of dried pinto beans: $3.76.
Number of pint jars worth of beans you get from a 4 lb bag: 15.

That brings us to 25¢ per jar because I'm reusing lids. I'll test each jar tomorrow for a proper seal to see if any of the reused lids failed. But they almost never do.

If you have to buy lids or don't have Tattler reusable kids then it's going to cost 55¢ per can and after figuring in labor and electricity it's probably not worth it. But if you are paying ~$1.40 a can for name brand pintos in a can then it's still worth it.

This will become burritos, refried beans and other things in the future.

Hi all, I recently did a 7-day hike and realised how expensive it is to buy freeze-dried food.
So i'm thinking to buy/acquire a dehydrator somehow.

Anybody have experience with what brands to look for, and what kind of food to try first?

I'm planning to use it for making food that we can prepare on a hike, preferably just by adding hot water. I also want to have some stored at home as 'emergency' meals for when we are too tired to cook!

Mother's day and birthday are near so she got to pick two things I'd make. One was strawberry lemonade concentrate and that's being difficult because the local store had no/bad strawberries so I keep looking. The pressure canner one she wanted was chicken soup. And I need like 16 cups of stock, so canning it was! Then soup tomorrow hopefully.

This was from a free turkey we got so I'm more disappointed than upset. That's still six pounds of free turkey. plus the stock I'm making.

Terrible day but I started this stock and I was going to get it canned. Six jars total but the canner holds five so five and one in the fridge!

Was my first time canning beans, had a bit of syphoning but otherwise went well!

And this time I'm pretty sure they all sealed! Well this batch. The first batch only had one seal. I'm not sure why they like to siphon. The second batch was also regular mouth instead of wide, so maybe that helped?? Regardless, delicious and even unsealed jars are getting eaten soon!

I have gone a little silly making lots of stocks. This batch was 7 pints, but there's three quarts left in the fridge to reheat and can tomorrow!

The Asian Supermarket has a huge selection of bones. I was expecting to only find oxtails but they had neck and feet as well! And duck feet so my next thing will be duck feet stock! Exciting!

I think 4 of the 5 pint jars have sealed. I'm mentally willing the last to seal lol.

I didn't have quite enough blood oranges so one small regular orange went in there too lol

Really unctuous! Fancy! Exciting!

Pressure canned chili! So far none have popped but mother says that takes longer than water bath canned, so I'll be hopeful! The first batch is out, the second batch is in but not yet canning, just the first steps of venting. This was using FauxPseudo's recipe!

Candied jalapeños my beloved, as family and friends love them so they're good gifts! Also the first use of the electric canner! It worked like a dream. Warmed the jars, went smoothly into fill, heat, cook, and then cool! And so much less steam in the kitchen overall! Amazing.

The big gift this year! Exciting! I've never pressure canned, and this thing is so fancy! It had a jar warming part of the cycle, it has cycles, and it can do water bath canning as well!! I'm excited to try using it after the holidays!

Ten jars this time! All sealed as well, which is nice. For some reason, most years one jar of apple butter just refuses to seal.

Our apple trees were crazy fruitful this year so I decided to try my hand at some apple butter. I'll for sure be making more soon, it's delicious.

I canned more sauce today.

I even set out the lemon juice, but forgot to put it in. I'm blaming it on the wine.

Boiling water bath works well with the tattlers.

My wife bought a rotisserie chicken, so we made stock with the carcass. Its just so good to get 5 liters of stock from what would be garbage. Tattler lids worked well today, only one didn't seal. I don't normally do that well. Easier to get them to seal in a water bath.

60 lbs of tomatoes yielded:

• 10 x 500 mL of sauce
• 19 x 500 mL of crushed tomatoes
• 5 x 500 mL (ish) of crushed tomatoes in freezer bags.

That's all for 2025 ☺️

Bonus photos of the deer watching us toil:

Salsa recipe from Ball canning, called Fresh Salsa. I had never peeled a tomato before. It wasn't as difficult as I feared. Also managed to have enough garden tomatoes I didn't need the backup store tomatoes!

cross-posted from: https://crazypeople.online/post/6674394

Cross posting because someone was asking about preserving meals, and dehydrating is an option that people might not always think about! I'll add more context in a comment.

It's chilli: pinto beans, tvp, mixed veg, tomato sauce, jalapeno, and seasoning. I think the seasonings were salt, celery seeds, veg bullion, chilli powder, cayenne, and cinnamon. I made it in an electric pressure cooker.

I dehydrated it for about 24 hours before I broke it up and stored it in an air tight container.

I don't really cook huge meals so I don't own many large pots. I've currently got that pot in the photo going (with the lid off) as well as the electric pressure cooker (on sauté, lid off) with about half the volume of the epc in the fridge waiting for some of this to reduce.

I do the actual water bath canning in large enamel pots in a propane burner outside. I pressure can indoors (one layer only, in a pressure canner made for glass top/induction) so neither of those are really suitable for sauce making.

Do folks just live with doing things in batches? Should I just accept I could use another large pot I only use once a year?

This is about half of the 60 lbs we are preserving this year. I'm going to blanch and dice some tomatoes using a smaller pot and put those in the fridge to do the cooking step tomorrow for crushed tomatoes while the sauce is in the water bath canner.

I'm also thinking of getting an electric roaster which I can leave on the counter top. I bought a slow cooker at the thrift shop a few years ago but didn't realize they didn't get hot enough to reduce sauce in 🤦‍♀️

I try not to own too much stuff, but I do have the room (in the basement lol).