Continuing Adventures in Canning Meals

One of the big items on my agenda for this weekend was to cook and pressure can seven quarts of chili. The pressure canner I bought has a maximum capacity of seven quarts. I have only used once before today and only canned four quarts that time. I'm always looking for ways to conserve energy and am interested in knowing how well the pressure canner will process at full capacity. But unfortunately, I've discovered that although my pressure canner can hold seven quarts, my crockpot can apparently only hold four or five quarts. Since I'm only canning soups and stews for now, everything gets cooked in the crockpot, then transferred immediately to the hot quart jars for processing. So the number of quarts I process at one time is, for the moment, limited to the amount I can cook up in the crockpot at one time. So I will have to postpone my seven quart canning experiments until I process some fresh fruit or vegetables and can make sure I have enough on hand to do seven quarts at one time.

Today's efforts were not wasted though. In another forty minutes, the processing time will be finished and the cooling process will begin. By this evening, I'll be able to set my four quarts of homemade chili next to the four quarts of Spring Skillet Stew I processed last week. A full cupboard is a beautiful thing!