Canning Beets and Beans

Canning season is here.  I really do not like canning but I sure like the rewards.  Working over the sink washing, cutting, and doing all the necessary preparations to get your product ready for the bottles is very tiring on my feet and back.......and then, there's putting it in the bottles....etc, etc, etc.  But, but, but.............look at how I am rewarded when finished.  Nothing prettier than looking at the dark, deep purple of a bottle of pickled beets.  Canning gives me such a sense of pride and accomplishment when I'm all finished, stand back and look at all my bottles of produce, lined up neatly in a row.
This year, we (my husband was a big help) steam cooked our beets in potato baskets in a big metal gargae can.  Doing the process this way took very little time for our beets to cook.

When our beets were done cooking, all we needed to do was pull out the potato baskets, spray down the beets with cold water from the garden hose and start slipping of the skins.

In the past, I've always sliced my beets by hand but this year I used a Mandolin slicer which cut down my time considerably!

And, just let me tell you how handy this little gadget is.  Instead of trying to get my lids out of the hot water with a fork or whatever else seemed handy, I purchased this green, plastic handle with a magnet on the bottom that easily pulled the lids out for me.

 

Here my beets are......ready to do the water bath thingy, except, I don't water bath mine....I use a steamer process.  There is a shallow metal container on the bottom that you put water in, put on a flat top that is filled with holes, put on a dome cover, let the beets come up to heat and start steaming.  

I told you.  Look how pretty my beets are in all that dark, purple juice.  They almost look royal, standing there all straight, lined up in rows.

 

This year, my husband wanted to try canning in the pressure cooker, something we have never done before.  While I was putting the beets in bottles and canning them, he was outside, snapping beans.  After the beans were ready, he got out the books and started reading on how to use the pressure cooker for canning.  When all was said and done, it wasn't nearly as hard as I was expecting it to be.  Here are our beans as we were getting the lids and rings on in preparation for the pressure cooker.

This next picture says it all!