JARS JARS JARS. - Jars wasn't just the name of a jive talking Goofy character in "StarWars". Jars are what we need MOST during a Recession. During food scarcity times, inflationary times. You will use your jars in a dozen ways. SAVE your JARS.  Let me detail the reasons WHY WE NEED TO save jars!

1). DRY FOOD STORAGE. Food hoarding is already going on everywhere as
people realize something is "way off". Famine heading our way, German
levels Inflation. Drought. Food scarcity. ALL OF THE ABOVE. BIOFUELS eating
up the grains. This combo will drive up food prices which are
already TRIPLE DIGIT due to inflation. Today, California has run out of
matzoh bread due to hoarders (it is thought). (a Storable grain.) This food
cannot be had in California. Ditto rice, all thru state of CALIF --a rice
producing state, --it's hard to find as it's a target of Asian hoarders. And
somehow a lot of people have caught wind of scarcity issues.

Today, basmati rice sells for 90c an lb tomorrow maybe 2$? So Indians and
Arabs will go seeking to buy in bulk. Lentil prices will go nuts, beans, mung beans, aduki
beans. Point is: we need to store grains now! GENERALLY THE TECHNIQUE for
storing foods that always has unseen critters in them, from point of origin, or which
get attracted once here, is to freeze for one month, to kill them, then STORE.
Jars are one way to keep  pre frozen grains. Not bags. Now, if you have
cannisters of some kind, that's a better way. But most of us can't even
find a supplier of big cannisters. 50lb size. Wherever you store them, put a dry
bay leaf or two in there with the grains.

2.) "ABUNDANCE IS BRIEF" Sayeth the Lord. Our local woods and alleys
abound with delicious, summertime fruits, more than we can eat just in
summertime. What about the other three seasons? Belly rumbles all year long
last I heard. Well, our ancestors jarred the fruits up, called it jam. You make
perishables hardy when you boil w. sugar or honey. Right now, I can get ten
lbs of grapefruit in a short drive going down alleys, lemons, oranges. In
summer it'll be peaches. Just what falls on alley floor outside fences of
suburban homes in California is more than you can find for thousands of
dollars at a MARKET! Ergo, JARS and MORE JARS and oh yes, SUGAR!

3.) SUMMERTIME produce, vegies can be jarred up, if you know how to
pasteurize. C'mon, in a famine you wouldn't eat canned stringbeans? You will
be putting TOMATO on everything as it yields in tons not pounds!

4.) STUFF! if you are going to hoarde nails, screws, bolts, things commonly needed
which will double in price shortly, due to INFLATION not scarcity, you'll
need JARS!

5.) MERRY XMAS! Good neighbors gift foods to chums. Whatya gonna use for
your special gift of dry Mexican CHILI MIX (peppers, oreganos beans, useful for boiling
chopped rabbits, squirrels and garden varmints like possums into a tasty
protein meal?) It's not like they're very meaty! So you need JARS!

6.) Garden seed. Say your tomatoes give you bushels all summer long. You
gonna buy seed next year at HOME DEPOT? It's 3$ now but likely to be 6$
soon enough. So when you go to cut up your tomatoes to cook them, instead,
just squeeze the slime/seeds out into a cup of water. Leave overnight. Only
cook the meat of the tomato. Next day, slime seeds get strained, the seed
dried out in sun. That seed must be stored where critters cannot eat the
heart out. small JARS WORK for that.

Pumpkin seed is bulky, when dry, must be stored under glass as some minute
'noseeum' eats them out to the husk! (put one bay leaf in there to ENSURE!)

7.) A wall of Jars is decorative, folklorico.We can imagine now, the new
shelves you'll build over all wall space, paper doilie edged, tons of
regular American jars with labels you made.

For the jars: Clean the jars and lids in the dishwasher or submerge them in
a large pot of boiling water. Preheat the oven to 220 degrees and place a
baking sheet on the middle rack. Place the jars and lids on the baking
sheet and "cook" them for about 20 minutes while the figs are simmering.
Remove the jars and lids with clean tongs right before you are ready to
fill them.

ANOTHER SOURCE: There are two easy ways to sterilize jars. One is just to
use Miltons, the stuff you use to sterilise baby bottles, and mind you if
you buy a bottle of this it will surely come in handy in a few months;)
The second is to thoroughly clean jars, remove labels and rinse with hot
water. Warm jars in a slow oven (150 degrees celcius) and use them straight
from the oven. This prevents the jars from cracking when being filled with
the hot mixture. Lids should be boiled or rinsed in very hot water and
allowed to drain.

Goodluck with the marmalade, I might get stuck into some jam making myself
soon as my jar collection is getting quite big!

THIRD METHOD:

http://summer-recipes.suite101.com/article.cfm/sweet_pepper_relish

<----- BACK TO THE FUTURE INDEX