Lots of Chicken

Grocery delivery guy arrived yesterday.  Usually he doesn't get to my apartment until the middle of the afternoon, but yesterday he was here before noon.  My order this week included 18 lbs. of chicken breast that was on sale.  The early delivery gave me time to can it up the same day.

Sometimes I pack cut up chicken breast into the jars raw.  When I can turkey I cook it first to make it easy to get off the bones.  I decided to cook the chicken mostly to thaw it all quickly so I would have time to can it before evening.

Son helped.  He put the chicken on cookie sheets and baked them in the oven until they were done through.  He passed the pieces on to me and I cut them up into bite-sized pieces and filled the jars.  Most of the time when cooked meat is canned, a liquid is needed, so I filled the jars with hot water, wiped off the rims, added the lids and ran them through my pressure canner for 75 minutes.  21 pint jars of canned chicken are waiting to be wiped off, labeled and put on the shelf.

I wondered if there was any difference in price between canning on-sale chicken breast at home or buying the cans of chicken breast at Sam's Club.  I did the math this morning,  It would have cost me nearly $20 more to buy the cans than to buy the 18 lbs. of frozen chicken breast and can it myself.  I didn't figure in the cost of jars or the Tattler lids as I already had them and they had all been used at least once before this.  And they can be used again as opposed to opening a can and tossing it when empty.  I think it was worth the cost.

Cub Foods also had smoked sausage on sale - the kind that is like ring bologna.  I bought 5 of the rings, cut one of them into about 1-inch pieces, packed the pieces into jars and canned them with the chicken.  They look good in the jars and I will taste test later this week to see if I like the result.  I hope so, for that could be another variety to add to my meat shelf.

So until I have more to add to my food storage, it is on to another project.  My oldest granddaughter graduates from high school in June.  Each graduating grandchild gets an afghan crocheted by her grandma and a photo album full of pictures of her taken over the past 18 years.  The afghan was completed over the winter, but I haven't started on the album.  The photos will be placed on decorative scrapbook pages and put into a nice album for that purpose.  Son is off running errands and will bring me the supplies that I have run out of and need to do this.

I love scrapbooking.  This is gonna be fun!