Wood cutting

This is not an area where I can claim much expertise, but I have found a few things that work.  I have a wood-burning stove, and have wood from a variety of sources:  fallen dead trees, trees cut down because they're too close to the house or have other issues, and trees (usually dead) cut down by the power company because they are close to power lines.  The latter are usually cut into fireplace- or stove-length logs for me, but the others are very long and need to be sectioned.

 Shown above (the one on the left) is a tree that was leaning over the house last spring.  It was damaged in an ice storm, developing a crack in the main trunk, so I wanted to pull it down in a controlled way rather than risk having it break apart in a storm and fall on the house. So I asked someone to help me get it onto the ground.

Once it was down, it was as shown below.

 

It wasn't terribly large in diameter, but was pretty long and was blocking the area where I normally park, so it had to be cut up.  Below is a view from the other end.

It could be cut up with a manual saw, like a bow saw that can be bought at any hardware store.  However, it would take a lot of time and probably be pretty fatiguing to cut up that much oak by hand.  I used a chainsaw.  Since I don't use the saw very often, I have a battery-powered one (so I don't have to mess with 2-stroke engines, fuel stabilization, etc.).  Battery-powered saws are also a lot quieter.  Nice ones are made by Stihl, Husqvarna, Oregon, and others.

First I cut off most of the smaller limbs then began making cuts to the trunk, using cubits as a rough guide to length (my stove will take 20" logs).  Eventually I had just a long section of trunk and used a timber jack to lever it up off the ground for remaining cuts (I got mine at Northern Tool).

 

Timber jacks are easy to use.  Just set the hook, pull the lever toward the ground, and the trunk--even a very heavy one like this water oak--pivots up.  It starts to get harder to do as the remaining amount of trunk is reduced; eventually, some other support will be needed to do the last cut (like a saw horse or two concrete blocks).

The finished result (with some unrelated pine logs in front) is shown below.  It took less than an hour to cut the tree up (and as can be seen, the interior of the trunk was rotting).

From this point, to make firewood, the larger logs need to be split--using a gas-powered splitter, wedge and maul, axe, or other method.

Whole Wheat Bread Success Story

As I have previously written, I sometimes do 100% whole wheat loaves using the no-knead approach described in that post.

The picture at right shows the same white/soft whole wheat loaf as in the previous post.  There's a decent amount of rise but it's overall pretty dense and the crumb structure shows small gas pockets (versus larger ones obtainable with some mix of white flour).

This is typical of whole wheat loaves, and it's true even with added vital wheat gluten (VWG)--as the one at right has.

Fast forward to this month, and I baked a whole wheat loaf using standard red wheat flour.  I forgot about the VWG and left it out.  I realized that too late to add it, but was committed at that point and went ahead.  I expected an even denser than normal loaf, but the end result was pretty good:

This is impressive.  One key factor is that it has gotten cold here in Georgia (comparatively), so I'm now heating rather than using air conditioning.  I have a seasonal temperature swing of about 10 degrees (79 summer, 69 winter) and I have previously observed that I get better results in the winter. During the day the temperature drops even lower, to as low as 63.  As one of the instructional videos at Breadtopia notes, counter and oven rises are to some degree offsetting: a vigorous pre-baking rise usually means less oven spring, while less rise during the fermentation time leads to a more dramatic rise in the oven.  That's part of what probably happened here.

The flavor is not impacted either way, and the individual slices are still pretty dense.  A 100% whole wheat loaf (particularly with red wheat) is not something everyone will like.  I like it okay although I wouldn't want to eat it all the time.  As noted in the other bread post, I usually use a near-50/50 split of whole wheat and white flour.  It gives consistently good results, although it is also affected by the seasonality issues mentioned above.

Cornmeal Brownies

First, an apology:  the fonts on this may be messed up on your screen.  For whatever reason, I can't get them to save in anything other than micro type.  I tried a few things, but haven't found a fix.

Cornmeal brownies?  Seriously, yes.  Although the concept may sound a little gross, they are actually pretty good.  I found the recipe one day at Grit magazine's site. I adapted it a bit to make it a more conventional brownie recipe (black walnuts are okay for brownies; peanuts are not so much).  I ended up with this:

1/2 c cocoa powder (I used dark)
1 stick of butter
1/2 c flour (I used white flour)
1/2 c cornmeal
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
4 eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 c sugar
1/2 c brown sugar
1/2 c nuts (black walnut, but almost any other nut would be fine--and 1 c will also work with the same baking time as described below)

I mixed it all up and found that I had to bake it longer than the recipe suggested: I left it in for 40 minutes at 350 degrees.


This shows a cutaway view of the first pan (I have now made two)--the flavor is nice.  There's definitely a texture of granularity because of the coarseness of the cornmeal, but what I tried tasted basically like brownies.  Of course, the black walnuts may impact that, too, since they are fairly strongly-flavored.  In the second batch, I used 1 cup of nuts and it worked well.


One other note is that I tried a new cooking fat to grease the dish beforehand: tallow.  I'd read about it and wanted to try some, so hunted down a jar online.  It's definitely pricier than the partially-hydrogenated lard I have been using.

When I opened the jar, I was greeted by a faint, unmistakable, and not necessarily welcome beefy aroma.  It had a slight flavor to it, too.  Crisco and processed lard are very neutral.  I may have more to say about tallow in the future.  It worked and it is no longer perceptible in the finished product.


Overall, this recipe has definite potential.
 

Scalloped Oysters

This is a recipe for a dish I remember from Thanksgiving and Christmas when I was growing up: scalloped oysters.  Pretty much only my mother and I would eat them.  When I was trying to recreate that dish as an adult, I looked around online.  There are a lot of recipes, most of which are a variation of this:

2 cups cracker crumbs
1/2 cup (2 sticks) butter (3/8 cups also works, and some recipes call for 1/4 or 1 stick)
1 pint oysters, liquid reserved (which I don't deal with; I just dump it)
1/4 tsp Worchestershire sauce
3/4 cup half & half
3 tbsp fresh chopped parsley (or 3 tsp dried)
Salt and pepper as desired




Melt the butter and pour over the crumbs, mixing well. In a small (I use a 6x10 Pyrex) dish, put 1/3 of the crumbs, followed by half the oysters, then another 1/3 of the crumbs, and the rest of the oysters.  Then put the half and half mixture (with parsley, Worchestershire sauce, and 'oyster liquor' [if used; I omit this] added) on top of the upper layer of oysters, followed by the rest of the crumbs.  Bake at 350 for 40 minutes, or if doing with a turkey, 325 for about 50-60 minutes. I grease the dish beforehand, but I'm not sure that's necessary.

This is similar to what I remember.  I don't add any salt or pepper, and I don't add any alcohol--some recipes call for wine or sherry.  As noted above, I also don't add in the excess liquid from the container of oysters.  The dish is oyster-flavored enough and doesn't need an extra boost. Mixing the parsley and Worchestershire sauce in with the half and half works fine (some recipes call for 100% cream, but this is fatty enough without that).

It's pretty easy to do.  If done together with everything else that commonly goes with a Thanksgiving meal, it comes at a hectic time in the process, when everything else is nearing completion--so it pretty much has to be easy or it couldn't get done.

A bonus:  leftovers freeze well.  Back in the day my mother and I were the only ones who ate these; nowadays it's just me.  So I have a lot to put away for later.

Cranberry Sauce, 2016

I just did the annual canner run of cranberry sauce.  I followed the same general procedures described last year, but this year started with more berries. I missed out on the three-pound bags at one warehouse club--they were only there one weekend and my refrigerator was full of other things--but another club had two-pound bags.  I got five.

As I have done previously, I started by culling bad berries. There are always some that have a few soft spots, and some are profoundly bad.  It takes a bit of time and I'm sure I miss some even with the sorting; nonetheless, it improves the finished product.  FWIW, making cranberry sauce on your own rather than buying what's available already canned makes sense for this reason alone: some of the bad berries may be removed at canneries by quality control procedures, but some probably make it into the finished product.

I spent close to an hour picking through the berries, and at the end I removed 21 ounces' worth.  Last year I noted that I had an 18% fail rate; this year was better--only 13%.

That left me with a lot of berries, and I knew I'd have more than one canner load (eight quarts) of sauce.  I upped the water and Whey Low by 12%, using 12 cups of each. 

Given the increased quantity, I used my big stock pot, which has a capacity of 20 quarts. It fit everything with ease.   After picking through the berries, the only other thing I do to them before pouring into the pot is rinse them in a colander.

I let the syrup boil before dumping them in; some rupture immediately but some take a while.  Probably 15 minutes elapsed between pouring the berries into the pot and having a finished product ready to ladle into jars.  I got about ten quarts.  The last quart jar was only about 80% full, so I didn't process it--I just stuck it into the refrigerator.  It's mostly syrup, anyway.  As the picture below shows, I still have trouble balancing berries and syrup in the jars. I don't worry about it--they all end up being edible.

Out of curiosity, I checked the pH.  It looks to me like it's about 3.0, maybe 3.0-3.5.  Everything's looking good.

Apple Pie Filling

This is a straightforward application of the recipe at the NCHFP:  Apple Pie Filling.  I mix up the seven quarts recipe.  Apple cider or juice are both fine, and I used Whey Low instead of regular sugar (although the company says it can be used as a sugar substitute, there's no research on it as far as I know--however, I made a very heavy Whey Low syrup sample and tested its pH; it was comparable to what I get with straight tap water as discussed recently...so it seems to be fairly neutral as is sugar).

The fist step in making apple pie filling is to peel and chop the apples.  I could do it the same way I did the pears, which was pretty slow, but I used my apple corer/peeler/slicer.  Models are sold by various vendors; essentially it's something that is cranked and it quickly slices, peels, and cores an apple.  I then cut the rings into quarters for pie filling.  After that, I dunked them into a bowl with some ascorbic acid to reduce browning.

As can be seen (though not well) in the picture, there is still some peel attached to the top and bottom of the apple.  I snapped those bits off and ate them while I worked.  I suppose I could've manually removed them or just left them on, but I went for a somewhat-cleaner look (and ate the equivalent of one apple during the processing because of it).

The filling mix itself includes clear jell, which is corn starch with some level of special processing so that it will be well-behaved in recipes.  The clear jell thickens the mixture.  Initially, when mixing the sugar, clear jell, cinnamon, water and apple cider, it's very thin (I skipped the nutmeg).

As it starts to heat, the clear jell begins to clump together as shown below.  Eventually, it sets up and assumes a very thick consistency.  I stirred it almost constantly during this time.  When it starts to boil, it's like magma: large bubbles pop, flinging bits fairly high.  I got some on my arm and one finger, which caused minor burns.  A minute of that was enough.  I dumped in the 3/4 cup of lemon juice and quickly followed with the apple slices.

 The NCHFP recipe calls for blanching the apple slices, but that didn't seem necessary to me: after all, it will be subject to boiling during the canning process.  I have made this one time before, as briefly noted previously, and did not blanch that time, either: the finished product the first time around was good.

One caveat: the NCHFP calls for one inch of headspace, which is a lot, but it's necessary.  I tried to leave that but a couple of jars overflowed during the canning process nonetheless.

Using this stuff is pretty easy: dump a jar into a pie shell, put a top crust on, and bake.  It's something nice to do when you have a surplus of apples.

Random Observations on pH

This post has very little substantive content, but it's something I have observed a couple of times before and thought was interesting.  Most fruit is acidic enough to be processed in a boiling-water bath (BWB) canner (i.e., pH of 4.6 or lower).  Foods that are low in acid or basic can be BWB processed if enough acid--generally vinegar--is added to drop the pH below the threshold at which the bacteria that causes botulism can grow.  This is how pickled vegetables are made safe for BWB canning (though just tossing some acid into a jar isn't satisfactory; it has to be enough to lower the pH of both the solids and liquids to no greater than 4.6).

I have pH test strips and sometimes check the level of things I'm making--though this can be difficult if the food in question is strongly-colored (e.g., sauerkraut made with red cabbage).  Recently I canned pears.  As is often the case, I had some left over that didn't fit into a jar for processing, so I tossed them into a container and put them in the refrigerator along with most of the leftover syrup.  A week later, I checked the pH of the syrup out of curiosity.

As can be seen, the pH was 5.5-6.0.  This is not acidic enough, but the pear-to-syrup ratio in the container was much lower than in the processed jars.  For comparison, the pH of the water from my kitchen faucet is fairly neutral:

The few peach slices in the container acidified the syrup, but only to a point: this has implications for lightly-packed canning jars.  The fruit slices themselves will be acid, but if there aren't enough, perhaps the syrup will not be.

Powdered Dairy Products

This one's a little unusual (at least to me): powdered butter.  When making jerky, one is admonished to trim as much fat off the meat as possible, because fat does not dehydrate.  However, powdered butter does have fat in it...but it is dehydrated and long-term storable, nonetheless.  It isn't all fat, and it is overall lower in calories than an equivalent amount of butter: the nutrition info says it has 45 calories per tablespoon, with 35 coming from fat and the remainder from carbs (1g) and protein (1g).  It also has 45 mg. of sodium, and tastes fairly salty.

I do not typically buy salted butter (and overall use very little salt in anything I make, such as bread), so it is probably just my perception.  It appears that 45 mg. is in line with a tablespoon of whipped salted butter, so someone who's accustomed to salt would probably think it is fine.

Otherwise, the flavor is okay.  It mixes up with a little water and produces something that is overall pretty soft but usable for spreading on anything; I haven't tried it in baking (though I may).

So the obvious question is, "Why?"  I mostly got it out of curiosity; it was on sale.  The can pictured above is a few years old at this point, and has probably been open about a year.  It's still good.  Probably something smaller than a #10 can would be ideal for someone who doesn't plan to use a lot, but it might be worthwhile to have on the shelf if ever needed.  Canned butter is available, too; I have no idea how long it would last with good quality.

Powdered whole milk is available, too, and rehydrates very well.  I usually mix a little of it with powdered non-fat milk to end up with something more appealing than fat-free alone (in my experience, about the best a fat-free powdered milk product can aspire to is the equivalence to liquid skim milk, which is okay insofar as it goes, but many powdered milk varieties fall way short--sometime I may do a review).

Powdered whole milk does not have a shelf life as long as powdered fat-free, which (based on research done by Oscar Pike and colleagues at BYU) is about 20 years (if stored in an oxygen free environment).  I currently have an open can of powdered whole milk that has a best-by date of April, 2015 (18 months ago) and it's fine. I am trying to use it quickly, however--so quickly that I'm mixing it straight, with no fat-free powder added.  I'm going to spoil myself.

Powdered sour cream is available, too, but I haven't tried it yet.  Powdered buttermilk is okay but when mixed up is a little more bland than fresh.  All of these may or may not have utility for you depending on how fast you consume them and how accessible fresh products are.

Blueberry Preserves

I do things other than mix sugar-laden preserves with the fruit I grow and buy.  However, preserves are easy to make; they maintain quality for a long time (at least four years); and they are a good thing to give people.  Pickled carrots might not be accepted by everybody, but (almost) nobody will turn down preserves of some sort.

That being said, I don't like blueberry preserves all that much.  They're fine, but not as good as peach preserves.  The blueberry flavor is not that strong in the finished product; it's more just sweet.

I got a good harvest this year and did one canner load (six pints) of preserves (the canner will hold more, but six pints is a manageable quantity).

SureJell's package insert has a recipe, but I don't see it at quick glance on their website. It's just four cups crushed blueberries, four cups sugar, one package pectin. This produces three pints, so it could be doubled.   By the way, it's a standard admonition to avoid doubling a jam or preserves recipe because there may be problems with fruit set.  I am happy that I have never had any problem doing that; it's more efficient that way.

Pickyourown.org has a recipe that starts with 10 cups of blueberries (intact), 7 cups of sugar, and 1/4 cup lemon juice, plus water and one package of pectin.  I don't add water but otherwise followed this recipe (bumped up slightly with 11 cups of blueberries, 7.5 cups of sugar, and an extra teaspoon of lemon juice because the recipe otherwise yielded about 5.75 pints the first time I tried it).

Blueberry preserves are just about the easiest kind to make.  Rinse the berries; measure the right quantity; stomp them a bit with a potato masher; heat with pectin and lemon juice; add sugar when it boils; return to a full boil for one minute; then fill jars with 1/4" headspace and process about 15 minutes (I'm at 1200' elevation so added 5 minutes to the sea-level recommendation of 10 minutes).

That's about it.

What did I do with the remaining 15 pounds of berries? I froze some, which can later be turned into pies or even more preserves, and ate the rest fresh.

As I noted last year, blueberries can be cheap at the peak of the harvest (here in Georgia, both Sam's and Costco had them for $4.98 for two pounds in July). That means I saved myself about $50 by harvesting my own bushes.  Considering the time it took, in an economic sense I'm probably not coming out very far ahead. I was picking every two to four days for almost a month, from mid-June to mid-July.  But I like doing it myself (this is not to say that I didn't buy some, as well, and dehydrate them).

Dehydrating peaches

As I mentioned last year, I lost my crop in 2015 due to a late frost.  In late March that year, my temp dropped to a horrifying 23 degrees at ground level one night, wiping out both the blueberries and peaches, which were in full bloom.  I tried spraying water on everything but the hose froze, so I gave up.  I later found out that a few Belle of Georgia peaches survived at the top of the tree.  The killing cold was only at ground level.  However, by the time I noticed them, they were long-neglected in terms of spraying (for disease and insects) and did not mature well.  A few blueberries made it, too, probably due to buds not being open at the time of the freeze.  But I got just a handful (literally) off of five bushes.

This year was back to normal, at least for one of the trees.  As I indicated last year, my peaches were on dwarf rootstock, which various sources have indicated don't have long lifespans.  This was the trees' 16th year in the ground, and the yellow cling continued a steep decline that began a couple of years ago.  It only yielded five pounds--which were good and eaten fresh (bug free)--and the tree will be turned into firewood this winter. It is pretty much dead at this point.  Alas.  The Belle of Georgia produced about 55 pounds, which is somewhat less than the record year.  BG had some issues with the harvest, too, which I'll detail another time.  But I'll take the 55 pounds and be happy.

I turned the peaches into pie filling mix (at the time of processing, that just means putting five pounds of sliced treated peaches into a bag and freezing), peach preserves (made in a fashion similar to the pear preserves  described recently), peach butter, and I also dehydrated some.

It's the same process I follow with apples.  Slice, treat to prevent darkening, and put on the racks in the dehydrator.  I leave the skins on.  I don't peel unless forced.  The result is a very high-quality product that keeps for a long time.  I still have some dehydrated peaches from my bumper crop a few years ago.

I have also canned peaches--as in sliced and put into syrup--but that is probably my least favorite way of preserving them.  They are okay that way, but it is much less work to dehydrate.

Thoughts on Tattler versus Metal Disposable Canning Lids

Tattler lids are made of plastic, have a rubber gasket, and are reusable.  They cost a lot in comparison to single-use metal lids, but can be bought in bulk for less than a dollar each (if you do a lot of canning, keeping in mind that a lid is unavailable until the jar it is on is opened, you might need 200-500 or even more.  Buying large quantities makes sense).  I do not know what their lifespan is, but I have seen 10 times mentioned as an average; there's probably a distribution in there somewhere with some being worn out sooner, some later.  I suspect the gasket is the first-to-fail component in most cases, and replacement gaskets can be had for less than $0.28 each.  The Tattler site itself says they are "indefinitely reusable".

Is this cost-effective?  If you assume $0.73 for a wide-mouth lid and you get 10 uses out of it, that's $0.073 per use.  If you can stretch that to an average of 15 uses with a replacement gasket, that cuts the cost to $0.067 per use (these numbers are for illustration only: as noted above, the real average lifespans may be higher or lower; I haven't hunted down any source that cites actual data).  For comparison, metal wide-mouth lids can be had for about $0.20 each if you look for them (full sticker price is higher).  Mills Fleet Farm has them for $2.35 per box as of this writing, and I got them for $2.44 per box at Wal-Mart last week locally.  So the lid cost to do 15 cycles with Tattler (including a replacement gasket) could be about $1.00 versus about $3.00 with metal lids.  These are averages: some Tattlers might become unusable after the first use, while others might be going strong after 20 uses. To be redundant, there's a distribution of lifespans--I don't know what the parameters are.  User practices probably matter, too.  If one reusable lid plus two gasket replacements lasted for 30 uses, the cost for reusables versus metal lids would be about $1.29 versus $6.00 for disposable metal lids.

So far, so good.  I got some reusable lids a few years ago and started experimenting with them, getting generally good results.  I then got a box of 100 EZ-Seal lids when they were on sale one time.  Reusable lids do require a bit of finessing to operate (even the EZ-Seal ones, in my experience).  There are more-detailed descriptions of the process elsewhere (an example is here).  Basically, the lid can't be tightened with the ring as much as you might normally tighten a metal lid when first putting them in the canner.  When you take them out, you have to tighten them down all the way so they can form their vacuum as they cool.  It is a challenge to get the lid loose enough to vent, yet tight enough to prevent contents from leaking out during processing.  The EZ-Seal lids are advertised as not needing this special handling, but I have found that they show signs of excessive pressure if tightened as much as I do with metal lids (i.e., the center of the lid is domed a bit when processing is finished).  I tighten all of them when removing from the pot (this is easily accomplished with kevlar pot-handling gloves).

They aren't as easy to label, but the picture above shows how I deal with that: I just write on the jar with a Sharpie.  The writing can be removed with a little alcohol or, in many cases, it will disappear in the dishwasher.

Now for the rest of the story.  My failure rate with reusable lids has been higher than that of metal lids.  I have been canning for about 10 years and have gotten pretty good at the basics.  I think I have had a failure to seal or a lid come unsealed in storage with metal lids, but if it has happened, it has been only once or maybe twice.  In other words, it's a very rare event.  I do a fair amount of canning: 96 jars so far this year.  I'm very confident in saying that my failure rate with metal lids is 1% or less.

With reusable lids it is more like 20% (or maybe even more).  My first several uses, I did not have any failures.  Since then, I have had a few.  I might have had a reusable lid fail to seal when the jar was first cooling once or twice, but most of my failures have been in storage.  A jar that is sealed after the jar first cools is discovered months later to have come unsealed.  An initial failure to seal is disappointing.  However, having to use a jar right away is less serious than having to throw out something later.

Two recent failures:  As I recently mentioned, I made pear preserves for the first time.  I put up six pints.  Two jars had reusable lids that had been used before without problems.  Both sealed initially, but a day or two later, I noticed one had come unsealed.  I was a little unhappy about that but put the jar in the refrigerator and went on my way.  After reading comments about reusable lid failures to seal in a recent post on Rural Revolution, I decided to check my reusable lids in inventory.  I found one on a quart of pickled peaches that had come unsealed. I debated what to do with the jar.  The peaches had been made in mid-July, and they could probably sit at room temperature for that long without harmful spoilage (they're pickled in pure vinegar).  I wasn't sure, however, and in the end I tossed it.

That is a major loss.  I put up the equivalent of five quarts of pickled peaches this summer and lost 20% of that because of a lid failure (some were in pints; I put up eight jars total--only about three or four were sealed with reusable lids).  This also diminishes the cost advantage of the reusable lids, because 20% of my growing, harvesting, and processing time went down the drain (though if I started valuing my time in monetary terms I'd buy pickled peaches at an apple orchard in Georgia or off Amazon rather than do them myself).  I would've been willing to pay quite a lot to avoid losing the peaches.

The standard recommendations to deal with failures to seal--make sure the jar rim, gasket, and lid are free of anything that might inhibit the seal, tighten upon removing from the canner, etc--are okay insofar as they go, but they don't really make the case for reusable lids in my kitchen.  I did all of those things.  I might have missed something, but I did the best I could.  I may just lack adequate quality control to get failures with these lids down to an acceptable level (I would probably be fine with 5%). Maybe food or syrup is getting between the band and jar during processing.  My failures have mostly or exclusively been with previously-used lids and gaskets--that might be a factor.  If so, that erodes the cost advantage.  One other thing I will link to without much comment because it's from a source that obviously has an incentive to call reusable lids into question (i.e., Ball, maker of metal single-use lids): plastic lids don't vent as well when heating and may "may lose half their vacuum over the course of a year."  This is consistent with my experience, where I get a seal initially but it comes unsealed some time after initially cooling.

Cost is the primary factor in favor of the reusable lids, but having lids available in the event of a shortage is another.  Apparently there was a widespread shortage of lids in the 1970s, when reusable lids were first developed.  However, both of these factors can be mitigated.  Buying metal lids in bulk may reduce costs further from what I cited above, and metal lids can actually be reused once if you really want to.  This is nowhere recommended; the NCHFP notes that the gasket material gets deformed by the jar lid on first use, so doesn't reliably seal a second time (contamination is not a factor--the lids can be cleaned after the first use, and the heat processing takes care of contamination if any is present).  I have tried reusing metal lids to see if it works, and I have a failure rate maybe somewhat higher (perhaps double) than with new lids, but I don't have enough data to say much more (while the gasket may be deformed the first time, simmering it before reuse may soften the gasket and help it re-form to a new jar lid).  My observed failure rate with once-used metal lids has been much lower than my observed failure rate with reusable plastic lids, however.

My point in bringing this up is not to advocate for routine reuse of metal lids, but to observe that if you kept once-used lids that were in good condition and stored them somewhere, you'd have a buffer if there was ever an interruption in supply of new lids.  The storage life of lids seems to be quite long and probably exceeds five years.  In other words, I have put up 96 jars so far this year and will do more before the end of the year (applesauce, apple pie filling, and cranberry sauce at a minimum).  I could buy 500 metal lids today and then 100 per year going forward, and always have a substantial inventory on hand, plus a growing stack of once-used lids to fall back on if things got desperate for one reason or another.  With rotation, the lids would never be over five years old.

Which approach makes more sense--reusable or single-use?  That depends on one's individual failure rate with each type, the importance of cost, and other factors.  There's no single best answer.

Canning Pears

I canned some of the Kieffers (as part of my evaluation process to determine if I want to get a tree this winter to plant to go along with the Magness and Seckel).  The procedure I followed was pretty much the same as for peaches except that I did peel them.

It turns out I may not have needed to do that.  Jill Winger notes on her Prairie Homestead blog that she does not peel them and gets good results.  Contrary to the advice of the NCHFP, I raw-packed, as Jill did (though I did use a light 1:3 syrup, contrary to Jill's approach of using plain water).  It's not a safety issue; the NCHFP just says that raw pack yields poor quality.  The NCHFP recommended 25 min. for hot-packed quarts; the recommendation for raw- vs. hot-pack peaches is +5 min., so that's what I did, adjusting another +5 min. for altitude.

I timed it.  I spent about two minutes per pear, nearly half of which was peeling.  Peeling was also pretty messy, spending a spray of peach juice droplets over the immediate area.  I quartered them rather than leave them as halves, because the stem fibers and cores were easier to remove as quarters.  I just cut both of those parts out with a knife, then used the melon ball to dig out any remaining parts of the core (I'll see later if I was successful, but so far I seem to have managed pretty well with the pears I dehydrated).

As the photo shows, they resist browning well after a dunk in an ascorbic acid solution.  The contents of the bowl above had been out of the water for about an hour when the picture was taken.

Time start to finish for about 10.5 pounds, which yielded 5 quarts, 1 pint was about 3 hours, which is pretty standard.  It works out to about two pounds per quart, which is fairly typical (albeit more than with apricots, which are apparently not as dense). Even though packed cold/raw, they didn't shrink down much after processing.