Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Canning Jars - gotta love 'em

Is anyone else besides me in love with their canning jars, even if you don't can vegetables or make jelly? I love mine. I use them for all sorts of things, like storing excess pizza sauce. Or salvaging the contents of a can that was opened by mistake (like when my child opens cream of chicken soup instead of cream of mushroom).
I especially like that you can freeze with them. I don't trust my regular "glad-ware" containers in the freezer but the jars work just fine! For instance, I have a couple of recipes that call for V8 juice. I don't use it often, but it is so much more economical to buy the big jug of it - the 64 oz. jug is just a little more than 12-oz. can. So I bought the bigger container, and poured the remainder into clean jars and popped them into the freezer. I poured the amount that I normally use in my recipes into each jar, so that next time I make one, I'll just let one thaw in the fridge the day before.

Just remember to always leave some head space at the top of the jar for expansion!

3 comments:

Jeanie said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Jeanie said...

Those are great for Christmas gifts. You can make it look pretty by stacking the ingredient's of a cookie recipe : )
Then you can put nice material between the lid and pretty ribbon.

VLS said...

Hey! Those jars look familiar. I've started telling people at work that I would like to have my jars back when they get through eating the jam/jelly. Makes me wince when they tell me they just throw them away!!! You've found a great use for them.