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George Shirley[_3_] George Shirley[_3_] is offline
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Default Salt, salt, salt (not Jimmy Buffett)

On 8/15/2015 12:49 PM, Randal Oulton wrote:
> On Friday, 14 August 2015 13:59:05 UTC-4, George Shirley wrote:
>>
>> Just back from a visit to the stupor market, egad! canning jars and lids
>> at retail are ridiculous. Probably by mid-October both will be heavily
>> discounted. I don't need any as I have about eight dozen jars of varying
>> sizes up to half gallon. I AM NOT A HOARDER, no matter what my wife and
>> children say.

>
> George, what are the jars going for now? In Canada, sometime in the past few weeks they *raised* the prices of jars about an average of a buck a dozen. Bernardin brand (Ball's sister brand in Canada) pint jars (with lids and rings) are 8.99 or 9.99 now depending where you get them; you can get Golden Harvest pints at Crappy Tire though for 7.99. Replacement metal (flat part) lids are basically 30 cents each. (3.60 for a box of twelve.) For some stuff you're canning, the darned single-use, disposable lid is worth more than what you're putting in the jar.

Regular pints are running about US$11.00 per case of one dozen with lids
and rings retail. Quarts about twice that or a little more. Later in the
year they will be cut at places like Kroger to about $7.00. At Big Lots
the off brands are often a buck cheaper per dozen. Used to be that the
Classico spaghetti sauce 26 ounce jars could be gotten for free from
neighbors and friends who ate the nasty stuff and they were made to take
Ball rings. I have a few dozen of those I use for jellies, jams, etc.
and they must be at least ten or fifteen years old. Some of our jars are
close to fifty years old and still going strong.

> You know how the canning rings and lids now come right on the jars for several years? And they used to be on quite tightly and many people suspected that ruined the rubber gasket on the lid? Well I've noticed that the shipments of new jars (the buck extra boxes) hitting the stores have the canning rings placed very loosely now on the jars. Maybe the buck extra is for someone in the factory down in Muncie, Indiana to go around and loosen the canning rings a bit. Ha!
>

I noticed that too, never bothered me much as I toss lids after opening
a jar. About six or seven years ago I bought 345 regular lids from
Leman's, https://www.lehmans.com/p-2831-bulk-...dome-lids.aspx,
still have about 200 of them in a sealed container. I don't throw rings
away until they get rusty and that's seldom found. Two large plastic
containers of regular and large rings in the pantry. I just buy large
lids when I need them as we don't use man wide mouth jars except for
whole fruits etc.

We both started canning with our parents at a very young age so I've
probably been canning food since I was six or seven, excepting years in
the military and more years working overseas in the oil patch. Still
using a Sears pressure canner we bought in 1963, keep it clean, put new
seals and gauges on it about every three or four years, still going
strong. We make more jams and jellies than pressure canning beans, etc.
This year we've put up about 18 pints of green beans, and nearly that
many in crowder peas.

I will be emptying the jars hitting the three year mark pretty soon. The
grands and great grands have all slowed down on eating jellies, jams,
and pickles so will most likely just make fewer jars now they're growing
up. The two of us just can't eat that much anymore. Next month I will be
75, father, grandfather, great grandfather all died much younger than
that. Thank goodness for modern medicine, the Shirley curse of strokes
and heart attacks is slowing up.