Brian's Blog » canning

Pickled Peppers

Brian — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 01:35:56 +0000

Tonight, I canned 4 pints of peppers from the garden. Super easy to do, fill the jars with peppers, then fill with hot vinegar/water, then put in boiling water for 10 minutes. I hope they taste good!

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Is your time worth $72 per hour?

Brian — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 03:33:21 +0000

I did the math behind making your own jam and now I think making your own jam is one of the best uses of your time possible. It is easy too! As an added bonus, you know exactly what ingredients are going into that jar: there are only 4 ingredients. I wrote more about it on the North Texas Vegetable Gardeners post “The Economics of Making Your Own”.

Box Project Completed

Brian — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 05:04:21 +0000

I finished up my box project today, finally. It took a lot longer than I thought it would, mainly because of the amount of time I spent putting the clear finish on the boxes. I built 10 boxes total, all of them are 16-1/2″W x 16-1/2″L. I built a variety of heights, to see what worked best for me. We are in the process of going through all the jars I’ve accumulated and washing them and sorting them. If I have to build more, I might try using cheaper materials, maybe some OSB to see how that will hold up. I figure I spent around $20/box on this go-round, and they are overkill. They are nice though, should last forever, and I got a good bit of satisfaction and enjoyment out of making them.

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Mason Jar Box Design – Version 2

Brian — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 04:24:57 +0000

Digging through box after box of unorganized mason jars last night to find the ones I needed was enough motivation for me to decide to move forward with my little box-building project. I thought of a better way to make the boxes stack, by arranging a side piece that will extend up into a void in the box on top, the boxes will lock together. Installing the bottom piece so that it extends below the other pieces will mimic a lid, so that I don’t need lids for every box that is stacked. The boxes will stack and lock with or without lids. I also played around with Google SketchUp again. Of course I impressed myself with my self-taught 3D CAD skills. Here are the pictures of my new design:

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Strawberry Jam

Brian — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 03:53:11 +0000

Sprouts is selling strawberries for $0.97/pound right now. This is what $6 of strawberries + $5 of sugar + $3 of pectin, and several hours of my time yielded tonight.

12 half-pint jars and 3 3/4-pint jars. It took me two batches. The last batch has 1/4 tsp of fresh ground black pepper. I’m curious to taste that one. Jars of homemade jelly generally sell for $5 each, so we have about $75 worth of jelly, for about $15 in materials and a few hours of time.