The Rational Prepper - Canning

I've been doing some rainy-day canning this spring. 

Pressure Canning
Pressure canning is still a challenge and I have difficulty getting all the jars in a batch to seal  :-(

Liquids seem to be the most difficult ... I recently made a batch of pasta sauce and only 3 of 5 jars sealed.  The failed jars are still thoroughly cooked and will keep in the fridge for a few weeks, but it's disappointing.

Dry Canning
I've been using mylar bags for preserving shelf-stable dry goods like rice and beans. Properly stored, dry goods will stay fresh for 10 years or more.

Recently, I discovered a great vacuum sealer for canning dry goods as well as salt and sugar. 

When I opened the last bag of Basmati rice from 2018, the aroma and consistence was still perfect. It will take a few months for us to use 5 lbs of rice so I transferred the rice into jars.  I was happily surprised that the vacuum-sealer worked perfectly every time and I've now used it to seal many jars of pickling salt (which was getting hard and lumpy).

As an aside, I use leftover jars from Classico pasta sauce for dry-canning. My friend, Jane, warned me that these jars shouldn't be used for pressure canning because the stock-persons at the supermarket use box cutters to slice the boxes open.  If the jars are scored they could burst in the pressure canner, but they are perfectly safe for vacuum canning. 

I buy Classico whenever there's a really good sale. If you reuse the Atlas jars the pasta sauce is almost free.