Canning

Many of you realize that hard times fell on our family a little over a year ago when I lost my job. We have been trying to find ways to stretch our dollar, but to still maintain our "green" lifestyle. Being eco-conscious is great, but sometimes it can be pricy in some aspects. Usually only when starting being green in an area, like the initial cost of cloth diapering. Despite it saving you significant amounts of money down the road, sometimes it's hard to get that initial bit of money.

Well, our biggest problem since our income change has been food. I am not willing to sacrifice certain things like avoiding artificial flavours, artificial colours, artificial sweeteners, or HFCS. Whenever possible, we want to avoid GE/GMO goods, and would prefer local and organic. Obviously, this isn't always possible. We try, though.

That being said, there is one thing we could be doing that we don't: CANNING.

I have never canned. Husband has never canned. Our (immediate) families have never canned. We simply don't know where to start. We have a garden and it has a good yield, particularly for beans and squash. We tried freezing some squash last year, but lost it all to horrible freezer burn. 3 whole gallons of squash, gone. That's makes us even more hesitant to try canning. Freezing seemed so fool-proof!

We have zero canning supplies (well, wait, I do have some mason jars...), zero idea how to do it, and zero funds to start doing it. Still, we feel this would be an option for us and want to learn. I have looked up a few things that might be useful, but there seem to be a few ways to can. One seems to use an ordinary pot, the other a pressure canner pot (like shown below).

We already have some mason jars (below):

Any tips? Brands? Advice?

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