You can can pecans!

Just for any who do not know, you are able to home-can nuts. Today, I canned pecans. Pecans, because living in the South, that is what we have! And just for those who do not know..they are pronounced.. "puh..cahns" not "peee..canns". If you are from the Deep South, it makes the ears tingle to hear them pronounced as they are spelled! Home-canning pecans is much simpler than it sounds. As matter of fact, it is perhaps the simplest of all home-canning projects. The hardest part is getting the little rascals out of the shells..and yes..you do have to remove them from the shells to can them. And I have that part down pat! I simply give the box of nuts to my son and ask him to shell them while I make him a batch of muffins..it works every time! Once the shells are removed, the pecans are spread in a single layer on a pan and placed in the oven which has been set to 200 degrees. Leave them in the oven for about an hour to dry them. In the meantime, wash and sterilize your canning jars. After sterilizing, empty out any water and place the jars in the oven to dry and heat. Place the jar lids in some hot water to soften and fill a hot-water canner with about three inches of water. Heat this to boiling. Once the pecans are totally dry (but not browned) fill the dry, hot jars and place dry lid and band on the top. Do NOT fill with any liquid and make sure to dry the lids before placing on the jar. As soon as you fill and band a jar, place it in the canner. Repeat until all the jars are filled. Check the water level in the canner and make sure it is *two inches BELOW the tops of the jars". (Yes! This is a bit different as usually the water is two inches above the tops of the jars.) Place the lid on the canner and set timer for 30 minutes. Once the time is up, remove jars and set in a draft-free spot. That is all there is to canning pecans! Easy as pie! Pie?? Ohh! That sounds yummy..pecan pie! Perhaps that will be on the menu soon!  As a note, if you do decide to can nuts, you should definitely go by the guidelines set by the USDA and not any blog...including mine.  What works for one person may not be the best process for anyone else.  Use care at all times.

Now for an update! Remember back a few weeks, I found a bottle in the mud of the Bayou? Well, it cleaned up beautifully and after getting a bit of advice from a cousin of mine, I found out that it still has a questionable history! Ha! Dating bottles is not as easy as it might seem. This cousin did send some interesting websites for me to look at on the computer and we have narrowed it down to the American Bottle Company. The so-called experts are still at odds as it seems there was a similar mark used by the Adolphus Busch Glass Manufacturing Company. But for us, the American Bottle Company won out! This put the bottle being made in a time frame of 1905 to 1929 and would have most likely held some type soda. Now as for being worth a fortune..probably not..the price ranges that I could find put it between $10 and $40. Not bad but not particularly a fortune. The question I still have is how in the world it wound up being in my Bayou??!! There has to be a story there some where! To me..all of these secrets of the Bayou are priceless!