A Review, Followed By A Hiatus

As promised, I have a review for you from my experiences with the cookware site I mentioned previously. I chose this time to review an item, and chose a pressure cooker/canner, as the needs of our family are growing, and this seemed a good way to meet some of those needs. So I chose this little number, a 23 Quart Pressure Cooker/Canner from Presto. First of all, the price is really good, at least in my opinion. I haven't checked it against other sites yet, but I know that these are not inexpensive. And with free shipping, you really can't go wrong. Second, the customer service is very good. Great communication through emails, frequent updates, and fast service. I was notified immediately of my order, and it shipped within maybe a day, possibly less, though I'd have to go back and check. In any case, I had it within less than a week, which included the weekend, which was really fast.

Now, onto the pressure canner. I tried that out this weekend. Let me tell you though, that baby is really big! The pictures really don't do it justice to the real size of it. Now, as far as pressure canners go, I'm sure it's a normal size, but I just didn't really grasp the size of this thing until I got it home and opened up the box. But, it has tons of room for lots of cans, so it's perfect for our family. I took it for a test spin on some homemade chicken soup, made from homemade veggie stock and a simple chicken soup recipe fit for canning. The pressure cooker worked great on the first try, though I was a little nervous never having used a pressure canner before. It was a really interesting process, but the canner worked great and all the little instructions that were included with it kept me pretty well informed about what to expect. The only thing not included was how long it would take to get up to pressure, but it wasn't so bad that I couldn't figure it out as I went, and I'm sure a lot depends on what's in there and such too.

Overall, I was very pleased with the results, and can't wait to try it out again. Which brings me to my hiatus... I will not be around for some time, how long I'm not sure, but probably a while. I am having surgery this Thursday to repair a compressed nerve in my elbow. Lucky me fell in the shower 5 years ago and it finally caught up with me. So, my exploits in canning will have to wait for a little bit. I will be looking over some canning books for recipes though, so hopefully I will have a good idea once I'm back of what I want to make, and will try to share those ideas as much as I can.

Have a great rest of summer!