Canning is Planning

And not like planning for the future - tomatoes in February, anyone? No, I've noticed that if you read ahead and plan a bit you can make canning something you do on a regular basis. I've been trying to can by what I call the step method - where can I break the recipe so I do one part today and finish or do another part tomorrow and then have several recipes in the right place to process several things in my big water canner on one day. I was able to do that with the Tigress' Can Jam (allium) this month and have everything ready to can both pickled onions and shallot confiture at the same time. Pretty nifty and it saves energy by having all of this done in one afternoon - esp since it takes FOR-Frigging-EVER for the water to heat


So here's how it works:
For pickled onions. Yesterday I peeled the onions and made the pickling liquid. Put the onions in the fridge and the same with the liquid. Since the shallot confiture took four days, I planned for 5 days. Day one - four - followed the recipe, but at the end of day four refrigerated shallots in liquid until today. So today, I began with the recipe for the pickled onions - picked up where the liquid is simmering and added onions and brought to a boil 
as instructed and removed from the heat. By that damn time the damn water was finally boiling, the pickled onions were ready to go in the jars and in they went. The onions needed to be in the water bath an astonishing (at least to me) 40 minutes. So that gave time to heat
the shallots in syrup, get them in sterile jars and into the canner for the last twenty minutes of the onion processing and they were both finished at the same time. More canning in simple steps saving time and energy.


*By FOR-Frigging-EVER, I mean about an hour!