 Welcome everyone, my name is Julie Garden Robinson and I'm your host for today's final field of fork webinar for the season. This is brought to you by North Dakota State University Extension. This is the seventh year we've done the series and we're really glad you joined us today. The next slide shows our webinar controls. And because of the number of participants, we invite you to post your comments and questions in the chat. So we're going to practice finding and using the chat box. So click to open the chat and then type your city and state. So in the chat, we want to know where you're coming to us from today. And while you're doing that, the next slide provides an acknowledgement. This program was sponsored in part with grant funding from the USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service. And I will ask all of you to complete a short online survey that will be emailed to you directly after today's webinar. And as a thank you, I will be providing lots of prizes to the lucky winners of the random drawings. And it's a really good prize and several of them. Be sure to put your complete address on the follow-up form, including your city, state and your zip code. And our next slide provides the title of today's talk, and I'm happy to introduce our speaker. Karen Blakesley is the coordinator of the Rapid Response Center and co-director of the Kansas Value Added Foods Lab with K-State Research and Extension. Karen has a BS in food science and a master's degree in foods and nutrition from Kansas State University. Prior to her extension career, she worked in food manufacturing. And one of her roles is teaching food safety in many areas, including home food preservation. So thanks for being here, and it's all yours, Karen. All right. Thank you, Julie. Good afternoon, everybody. It's great to be with you. Greetings from Manhattan, Kansas. So it's a pleasure to be with you. I did this program series last year, and I'm happy to be back this year to complete the final session for this particular series. And I think it's a great opportunity to share and for all of us to work together to share information. So on this slide, you'll see a QR code. If you have your mobile device with you or your phone, you can scan that. And that will give you a link, send you to a Google Drive, and that will provide you with all the links that I'm sharing with you today. It's a little easier for you to access them later. And I believe they will also drop a link to those in the chat because they're also posted on the NDSU Extension website. So we'll have this again later just to make sure everybody gets it. All right. So let's get started. So home food preservation is something that's been around for a very, very long time. And it's something that many people enjoy doing. It is a really great way to enjoy homegrown food throughout the year, whether you plant a garden or raise the food yourself or you're the benefactor from your neighbor's efforts. That's always fun. And so it is a great way to preserve food, whether you're canning, freezing or dehydrating. You want to preserve their food at its peak, whether it's the best quality that you can get, whether you're growing it or receiving it from somebody or going to your local farmer's market. I always like to say if you start with bad food, you are still going to have bad food because this whole process, no matter which method you choose, does not improve things. It only stops it in its time, its moment in time where it's at right now. So you do want to have the best quality of food that you can get to preserve so that it is equally as good down the road when you're ready to eat it. And it's a great way to have a homemade taste throughout the year, especially in the dead of wintertime. To have an almost fresh tomato that you preserved during the wintertime is always a nice treat. So some considerations to think about. I hope you're able to see this on your screen. This is a chart that I found from a new publication that Penn State University just put out. And they kind of grouped everything all together. This was really neat that they talked about the different factors to consider when planning to preserve foods at home. So it breaks this apart into canning, freezing, drying, and also freeze drying, which I'll touch on here in a little bit. So the different factors to think about. If you're just getting started on this, what's your final goal? What's your capabilities? What space do you have to store these things, whether it's in a cabinet or a pantry or in your freezer? Where are you going to store these things? How much money are you willing to invest in this? Because there is some money that goes into this to get the right equipment to do these processes. So those are some things to consider and think about before you just jump right into doing this. So I thought this was a nice chart that grouped it all together to give you some things to think about. So when it comes to home food preservation, there is a lot of science that goes into this. And I like to share this there. So there's a lot of science that goes into this. And there's two categories of factors that we're looking at when it comes to home food preservation. And the bottom line is food safety. First of all, stopping the growth of microorganisms. As you can see in this short little video on the right, this is a jar of salsa that has gone very bad. And as you can see, it is moving on its own. It's really quite striking. This is a jar of salsa that was canned the day before. It was not processed properly. It was not acidified properly. And there is something growing in there. Don't know what it is, but it's obviously producing some sort of gas and it's exploding, essentially. And so this is something that we want to make sure we take care of so that you end up with safe products in the end. So we're concerned about microorganisms. Sportage microorganisms include yeasts and molds. And then there's a category called pathogens. And the primary one we're concerned about is botulism. It's the last thing that you want. And because if you do get it, you will probably wish you could die because you will be miserable. Can you survive it? Yes, but it takes a long time. And it's quite a process to recover from that. And we don't wish that on anybody. The other thing that we want to control is enzymes. Enzymes are naturally in food. They're present within it. It's not added to the food. And these work inside the food. They can change color, texture, flavor, even nutrition over time and under the right conditions. And there's ways that we can control this. So for example, if you cut open an apple, you leave it set out in the open air and it starts to turn brown. That's an enzymatic reaction. And the way to control that color change is to maybe put some lemon juice on it or using some oscorbic acid mixture. That will help control that color change. So you end up with a better quality product in the end. So these two primary categories of things are what we're really looking at as far as what the science is that goes into home food preservation. So I want to go through several topics here. And maybe some of you have heard these things before, but I feel like repetition is a good thing. And so what recipes are you using? There are a lot of recipes out there. And with the age of the internet accessibility that we have these days, there's a lot of recipes that probably should not be used because they have not been tested properly. There's no research that's been done behind these. So these resources here, the USDA Complete Guide to Home Canning. So Easy to Preserve is a publication from the University of Georgia and the National Center for Home Food Preservation. This book is based on the USDA Complete Guide to Home Canning, but it also includes freezing and dehydrating. It's also got a lot of information like frequently asked questions, problems and solutions. It really is one of the best resources that we know of. That's available to consumers. This is something you can buy directly from them, but some of your extension offices may have a supply of these that you might be able to purchase it from them. But their website, the National Center for Home Food Preservation is also based on this book. So a lot of the information that's in the book is on that website. I mentioned the Penn State publication a little bit earlier with that chart. This is the publication where that came from. It's called Preserving Food at Home. This just came out here a couple of months ago, so it's brand new. Really nice, concise document. It's about a half inch thick book that you can purchase from Penn State directly. And it combines the so easy to preserve and the USDA guide and some other resources that they have all into one. Really good, really nicely done publication that they've put out. Here at K-State, we have several publications on food preservation. We have 10 publications on different food products and how to preserve them. And some other publications on information which I'll talk about here as we go through. The Ball Blue Book has been around over 100 years and they have been making great strides to keep it up to date. This picture here is the picture of the current edition, which is Edition 37. If you look on the inside cover, if you have one of these books, look for that Edition 37. That is what you need to be using. It is their most current Ball Blue Book that's out there. And they also have this book up here in the middle called the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving. This was just recently updated in 2020. So they have been doing a lot of making great strides to make sure they're up to snuff on the science and making sure that they are following USDA regulations and working with us extension folks too to make sure that their recipes and their information is correct. One thing we do not recommend you do is when you create recipes in your home kitchen and then just can them and figure and just guess basically is what you're doing. We see that a lot happen a lot with salsa. Everybody has their favorite mixture of salsa. You can make up those recipes and eat them fresh. You can also freeze them, which would be the best thing to do. But canning them can be risky because you do not know what the science parameters are of your mixture. You don't know if it's acidified properly, whether it's still low acid food. There's just a lot of factors you just don't know about. So taking your recipe and just applying the USDA recommendations, for example, we do not recommend that you do that. So please be careful about that. And because we don't want you to get sick or make your family sick. Adjusting for altitude. Here in Kansas, everybody thinks it's flat and it is not. The elevation ranges from around 6700 on the eastern side to just over 4,000 feet on the west side. And I know that's in that ballpark up in North Dakota, too. In this part of the country, that's the way it is. So as you go up in elevation, the boiling point of water goes down. So when it comes to canning, you do need to account for that change. And in water bath canning, you increase the time in pressure canning, you increase the pressure. And good recipes will tell you how to do that. I will tell you one thing to remember. If you're using the ball blue book or if you're using the so easy to preserve books, the amount of processing time or the pressure required for a recipe, what's in the recipe is for elevations of 0 to 1,000 feet. You need to adjust those. And the information on how to do that is typically in the introduction chapters. So don't skip that. Please do that because if you don't, you're under-processing your products. And that could lead to spoiled food or it could even make you sick. There's many ways to find what your elevation is. This website here is one. There's many apps you can download that you can use to identify your elevation where you're located. We have a publication that talks about this. And this is the publication number 3172 that talks about this whole topic and the importance of it. Many people just don't know about this. So that's why I wanted to bring this up to make you aware that if you're living on the west side of your state, probably you definitely need to adjust for your elevation. So read up on this and make sure you're taking care of that. Another thing to remember, pressure gauge testing. So this is something that needs to be done yearly. If you have a dial gauge, probably looks like this. This needs to be tested every year. And many local extension offices have the equipment to do this for you. We use a pressure gauge tester that comes from the Presto company. So we can only test these brands, National Presto Magic Seal or Made of Honor. Those are the only brands that we can test with that Presto pressure gauge tester. Weighted gauge canners do not need to be tested. There's really no dial on those that need to be evaluated. If your gauge is off by more than a pound, it's recommended to get it replaced. You can make adjustments for that. If you can't find, if you're not able to find a new gauge, but there's many ways to get those, some local hardware stores have them. But with the internet, you can find them. Presto sells them if that's what you have. But there's even off Amazon, you can find them there too. But it's really important to do this because it can really affect the sterilizing value of your pressure canning. And so it really is important. I'll give you a story. This just happened last week. I got a question from one of our extension agents. And she had a gentleman that brought in three pressure canner gauges for her to test. Well, he had already canned 100 pints of chicken. And after testing the pressure gauges, she found that they were off three to four pounds, which is huge, just huge. And they were off on the high side, which means what he was doing is he was under processing. And so all of that chicken, I had to tell her that this was over a week ago. I had to tell her that he should not eat that chicken. You know, they asked about reprocessing it, but we only recommend doing that within 24 hours of the initial canning process. So it was well past that 24 hours. So I don't like telling people to do that. And if he would have brought those gauges in before he did his canning, he could have saved himself a whole lot of grief, essentially. So be smart about that. If you have one of these gauges, please get it checked so that you know how accurately or actually inaccurately it could be reading. And another brand of pressure canner that's out there is the All-American brand. And they put a dial gauge on this also. Now, we cannot test this gauge. This is a different kind of gauge, and it's really difficult for us to even physically test this. And actually, the All-American company says they won't test them either. I've asked them. They won't do it. And they will tell you that this dial gauge is just there as an indicator that you have pressure inside your canner and that you can see that pressure is built. And then after the processing is done, that you can see that the pressures drop back down to zero. What you need to use is the weighted gauge, which is over here on the right. Now, this is a newer All-American canner. If you have one of these older versions, it might look something like this. First of all, if the gauge looks like this, I would get it replaced because this is a really old gauge. And over here, this stem piece here, they call that a petcock. You can get that replaced and get this weight and the stem that works for the weight. You can get that replaced. So contact the All-American company and get that so you can update your canner. These canners could last a lifetime because they're so heavy. And if they're taken care of properly, they can last a really, really long time. But just remember, what you need to use to measure the pressure that's inside the canner for this particular brand is this particular weight over here on the right. That's what you need to be using. All right. Now Presto has come out with a digital pressure canner. Some of you may have seen this, and this has been very popular. Our North Central Region Extension Group recently had a meeting with these folks just to learn more about it. This is really new technology. One thing that's kind of neat about it is that it really thinks for you. It can adjust for your altitude for you. You don't have to worry about that. It's got that technology built into it. Now one thing they have on their documentation for that, they say it meets USDA guidelines for processing. This does not mean that the USDA has tested this appliance, and it also does not mean that any extension program has tested this appliance. Right now we don't know of anybody that has. So Presto really needs to stand behind this product. If you have one of these and you have questions about it, contact them. They're going to be the ones that can answer your questions the best about this particular appliance. It's really caught on. It's a small batch system. I believe if I remember right, they said it can hold up to five quart jars. So it's not as big as a traditional sized pressure canner. It can also be used as a water bath canner except for quarts. It's not tall enough to accommodate for the amount of water that you need to can quarts, but you can do pints and half pints, water bath processing in it. So it is versatile in that respect for the most part. So this maybe is something of interest to you. If you haven't seen it, you can go out to the Presto website, gopresto.com and learn more about it. But it's something that, you know, it meets a lot of people's needs. It's another appliance. I don't know about you, but I don't have a whole lot of room in my kitchen for another appliance. So it's probably not something I'll be shopping for, but it is kind of cool. Now I do want to talk about some unsafe processing methods. I don't make these up on my own. People have done these over the years and they are not recommended to be used as a processing method for canning. So using your dishwasher, I understand it's a big appliance. You can get a lot of dishes in there. You can wash your empty jars in there. That's great and keep them warm, but you cannot use it as a way to process full jars of food. It does not reach a proper temperature to start with. So this should not be used at all. Using your oven or even a microwave is not recommended. First of all, the jar manufacturers do not recommend putting their jars in an oven because it's dry heat. The glass is not tempered for dry heat and it could likely crack. And then you'd have a whole mess inside your oven. And oven heating is a slow heating process and it takes a lot longer for products to heat up and for the heat to transfer through the jar as opposed to wet heat when you use a water bath canner or a pressure canner. So we do not recommend that you use the oven for any kind of food processing or canning. Open kettle canning and sun canning, these are kind of related. It's essentially put the food in the jar, put the lid in the ring on. In open kettle canning, you turn it upside down, turn it back side up. In sun canning, you leave them set out on the tables for days. Please don't do this. This is really not a safe process at all because you leave the door open for any potential bacteria or spoilage microorganisms that might still be inside the jars. They will not get destroyed. And this could lead to mold or yeast growth or even worse. And also these lids are not designed to be used in this manner. The seal will get heated properly like it needs to during traditional water bath and pressure canning. So please don't use these methods. The slow cooker, it's for cooking. That's what it's for. It's not for doing any canning. Using this style of a pressure cooker with the long arm on it is not designed for canning. It's not big enough. It's not strong enough. The recipes that we recommend using are built on the research where four quart jars can fit inside of a canner. And there is no way you're going to get that inside of one of these small pressure cookers like that. So this is only just for cooking. That's all it's to be used for. And then electric pressure cookers such as your Instapot type machines. We don't recommend using these either. We don't know for sure what temperature these appliances really reach. You can't adjust for your altitude with these cookers. So there's a whole lot of guessing if you do use this. I know there's some of these brands that have a canning button on them. Please don't use those. You're running a risk of ending up with spoiled food in the end. So use them for cooking. That's what they're great for. I will say that I know that we do know that I believe it was Utah. It was either Utah or Idaho. Utah State or Idaho that has been starting to do some research with these appliances. So we've seen some preliminary information from them, but there's still more to go on whether or not these are good appliances to be using for canning. Our North Central Region group which is 12 states, Julie and I are part of this group, and we're starting to come out with some handouts, some quick publications on different topics, and this is one of them. It's called Put a Lid on it. This talks about the lids and how they should be used and the best practices for home canning. This really came out because of the pandemic and the shortage of lids that has happened over the last couple years. So we thought we should get some information out on this to get you informed. The two-piece metal lid system that we show here is really what we recommend, the metal lid with the metal ring. And there are some lids out there that are reusable. They are a plastic lid, and it comes with a separate rubber ring system. Follow their directions on how to use these. They do have a limitation as far as how many times you can reuse it from the tests that have been done. On using these about 10 times is about the limit as far as how many uses you can get. An easy way to keep track of that is take a permanent marker and make a mark on the lid to keep track of how many times you've used that. These two-piece metal lids, this lid right here, only to be used once. It's one and done. It should never be reused, mainly because the sealing compound has already been compromised. It's been indented. And when you take the lid off the jar, you've probably bent it to get it off, so it's never going to sit right again. So these lids are only used once. But there is this option with these plastic lids that are out there. All right. And on these lids, always wash them before you use them. Today's lids that you see out there, they come in these green boxes, always be sure to look for the made-in-the-USA label on these. This is a little tip that we got from Newell brands, the owners of the Ball & Kerr brands. There's been some counterfeits out there, and these boxes, the counterfeiters make the boxes look exactly like this, but they don't show this on there with the made-in-USA. So that's one little tip on looking for good lids. They also added this dash and slash area here to help remind you to put a date on there so you know when you canned your products. These lids that you buy today do not need to be preheated. As I mentioned, you do want to wash them in hot, soapy water, but you do not need to heat them. Years past, you used to have to boil the lids to get the sealing compound to soften up. That does not need to happen today with these lids. If you do want to heat them up, just put them in hot water. Do not boil them because that will likely soften the sealing compound too much, and they may not seal correctly. When you're applying your lid and your ring to your jar, be careful not to screw the ring on too tight. What can happen is buckling with the lid because the air is trying to force itself out of the jar, and it's going to figure out a way to get out of there, and what it will likely do is cause the lid to buckle, and it'll look something like this, and then the lid may not seal at all. So the ring only needs to be screwed down what we call fingertip tight just until it stops, and that's it. And that'll give the lid enough room underneath that ring to do its job. Another little tip with these rings is hand wash them. Do not put them in your dishwasher because they will rust faster. So that's another little tip about those. And I thought this was a neat little graphic. I found this from Penn State Extension about how the lid seals onto your jars. So when you put the lid on your filled jars, there's your headspace area that has air in it, and you want to have the proper headspace for the type of product that you're canning. So at room temperature, the air is there, and you start heating it up inside the water bath canner or the pressure canner. And this causes steam to form, and that steam is going to push the air out. So the lid essentially burps is what it does. There's just enough space for that lid to move, and that air will get forced out. And then when it cools, that lid will pull down and form a vacuum on top of your jars. So this is kind of a neat little graphic to show you how a lid actually forms a seal on your jars. And you want to let this do its thing on its own. And one thing I see people do when I teach classes, I see people after they've taken the jars out of the canner, they'll notice that the rings might come a little loose. Leave them alone until the jar completely cools. You don't want to disturb that lid and the seal formation because it's doing its work at that point in time. Wait until it completely cools before you start messing around with the ring and adjusting it. All right. I mentioned the reusable lids. This is one of the brands that we know of that's out there. You still have to have the metal rings. Again, follow their directions. They come in wide and regular mouth size, and you can use them for either water bath or pressure canning. So just follow their directions. Just know that they work OK, but we've also seen some data that shows that the seals may not hold vacuum throughout a storage time. Sometimes they might lose their vacuum seals. So just be aware of that. But they are there and they are an option if you so choose. Now, on jars, this is another little publication in the North Central region has put together on jars and what to look for and how to use them. The jars should be washed. Make sure you wash them with hot soapy water. You can keep them warm. As far as sterilizing them, if you're processing a food longer than 10 minutes, they don't have to be sterilized. And sterilizing is essentially boiling the jars for 10 minutes before you use them. So that is something that is not required depending on the processing time. So essentially, if you're making jam and jelly, yes, you should sterilize those jars. But otherwise, for anything else that's longer than 10 minutes, and that also includes adjusting for your altitude, you can just use warm jars. So if you washed your jars in the dishwasher, leave them in there and let them stay warm until you're ready to use them. Also, we don't recommend using commercial jars for home canning. Many of these jars are not designed to be used for the home canning process. There are some commercial jars that say Atlas on them. That is an old brand. They used to make jars for home canning, but that company is out of business. If you see that word on a commercial jar, it's for marketing purposes only. That's what that's there for. And the other thing is the two-piece ring and lid system may not fit the mouth of those jars either because you cannot reuse the lid that came with the commercial jars. So stick to the canning jars. That's the best way to go. Another reminder, if you're making jam or jelly, please don't use paraffin wax on top of your products. This is an old method that used to be done. I will admit that was my job back in the day when I was helping my mom make jam or jelly. But more often than not, paraffin wax will cause mold to grow. And we just don't recommend using this anymore. Heat processing through a water bath canner is your best method to prevent any mold growth or any other contamination growth. This is a question that I've gotten recently about whether or not you can can cured meats or brined meats or even corned beef, something like this, that has gone through some type of a curing process. This is not recommended. And it's because the texture of the meat changes during the curing process. It tends to be firmer and drier than a fresh meat product. So you cannot use the pressure canning recommendations for fresh meat for something like this. The curing ingredients used in these products can also affect the amount of pressure or the amount of time that these products would need to be processed. So there just hasn't been any research done with any of these kind of meat products, and there's a lot of them out there. So we just don't recommend doing any kind of canning with these. So freezing is really your best choice to preserve these kinds of products for later use. So freeze drying is something that we've seen and more interest in for many people. And this requires using a piece of equipment that is a freeze dryer. These can be rather expensive. I've seen them from $3,000 to $5,000 for a system that can be used in the home. So this is a specific machine that has to be used. It freezes the food to minus 30 to minus 50 degrees below zero under a vacuum. And that converts the ice from a solid straight to water vapor. And it will dehydrate the food almost completely. It can remove up to 98% of the water. So it is a very, very dry product. What you see in this picture on the right here is some meat that's been, it was cooked prior to freeze drying. And then it's actually pork. And then they chopped it up, and then they put it in the freeze dryer to dehydrate it. This little packet here on the left is an oxygen absorber, which is really a really good idea to put in something like this, especially because there may be a tiny bit of fat left in there. You want to try to have as lean a product as possible. But there may still be some fat in there. You don't want it to go rancid. So the oxygen absorbers will help with that. So you really need to do your homework on this. It takes a lot of energy. It takes a lot of time to freeze dry foods too. Penn State has some information on their website here on freeze drying. And also Utah State University has done some work on putting out information on freeze dryers. They have a couple publications on what to know before you go start investing into this type of process. And also another one on the tools and the supplies that are really nice to have if you're going to do this. It really is kind of a remarkable food science technology. I mean, it's been used commercially for a long time. That's what they use to make the food for astronauts. All those foods that they eat up there in space, they're freeze dried because it takes a lot of the weight out of the food. And these are raspberries and they just almost look like they're really fresh almost. The other thing to think about too is when you go to use these, obviously most of the moisture is gone. So you want to make sure, you know, if you eat these raspberries, drink a good amount of water because it's going to pick up the moisture inside your body. So you want to be mindful of that. But it is kind of a cool technology. And we're starting to see some people that use these at home. But read up and do your homework on this first and see if it really is something that you want to invest in. Another question I've gotten recently in the last few months is on pickled eggs. We do not have any home canning directions to actually can pickled eggs. The directions that we have are essentially marinating them in the refrigerator. So this is some information from the University of Georgia on making pickled eggs. And they have some marinade recipes there. They have three or four of them, I believe. And you really need to store these in the refrigerator. We do not recommend that you store these at room temperature because they could cause the growth of botulism if you're not handling properly. So be mindful of that because we don't want anybody to get in trouble with that. The other related question that I've gotten a few times is using what's called a water glass method to preserve fresh eggs. This is a sodium silicate product that's mixed in water. It's made into a solution and it's poured over fresh eggs to preserve those. This is an old, old method of preserving eggs prior to having refrigerators. We have refrigerators these days. That's what they're for, is to keep your foods cold. And so we do not have any current research on using this method to preserve fresh eggs. Dairy products is another one that we get questions about. And despite what you see on the internet, there are no science-based methods for home canning, any kind of dairy product. This includes cheese, milk, butter, and such. If you do want to preserve any of these, the best method to use is freezing. Some of these can stay in the refrigerator for a little while. Butter is probably one that can last quite a while. Milk obviously has a fairly short shelf life. Some cheeses can last for a while, especially hard cheeses like your cheddar-type cheeses. They have a lower moisture content. And those can last a little bit longer. Your higher-moisture cheeses like cottage cheese, cream cheese, they have a shorter shelf life. But we just don't have any recommendations. These products are low-acid foods, too, and that would require a pressure-cating process. And we just don't have any recommendations to do any kind of canning for these kinds of products. So freezing is going to be the best choice on these. Fermentation has become quite popular. It's been around for a very, very long time, but it's really kind of seen a resurgent in growth in doing this. Our North Central Region group just had a meeting here last Friday, I believe it was, and we had some specialists from Colorado State University. They've done a really great job on putting together some publications and doing their research on a few of these fermented products. And one of them is making a sourdough starter. These can last a very long time. You have to take care of them because they are a living and breathing type ecosystem. Those microscopic yeast and bacteria in there, they rely on time and temperature, moisture, the acidity, nutrition, the oxygen, all of that factors into the survival of a sourdough starter. I know my mother had a sourdough starter that she kept in the refrigerator and we used it about every two weeks or so to make homemade bread. Had it for a very long time. Unfortunately, it went away. I think she just got tired of doing it, I think, unfortunately. But it is kind of a need. It's a great, you know, it really adds a lot of flavor to bread. And true sourdough bread is just flour, the starter, and salt, and a little bit of moisture. That's it. There's nothing else in there. Commercial breads that are called sourdough, look at the ingredient statement. If they have added yeast in them, that's not a true sourdough bread. It likely has some kind of acid added to it, such as acetic acid, which would be vinegar, to give it that sour flavor. But a true sourdough starter will give you that sour flavor. And so I point out some factors for the survival and growth of these starters. You know, obviously using good food handling procedures, washing your hands, keeping things clean. Just a reminder that flour is a raw food. So we do not recommend that you taste the sourdough starter until after you bake your bread. That's really the best way to get the flavor of it. Because baking is the kill step. It is, the yeast is coming from wild yeast, which is naturally on the flour or in the air. So it becomes activated when in the presence of water. They're just sitting there waiting for moisture to happen, and then they will become active. And just taking care of it. You know, it does take some effort to take care of it. You can take care of it every day, or you can keep it in the refrigerator for a week or so, and manage it then. There is a little bit of flexibility in that, but a lot of people, they're managing it every day. And one thing that the folks from Colorado said, it's a great way to build community because you're usually sharing part of your starter with somebody else. So that's something to think about. So Colorado State has a really good publication on getting a sourdough starter going. They also have one on kimchi. This is a really short fermentation time, probably just a few days, up to a week or so. This is fermenting vegetables. That gives a really flavorful, sour, salty flavor to the whatever vegetables are in there. There's hundreds of variations of making kimchi. And again, it's using wild cultures to ferment the vegetables. So they also have a publication on making kimchi if this is something that you would like to try and add some really unique flavors to your meals. And kombucha is another one that's really popular. This is a cider-like beverage that's a fermented sweet tea. The starter culture is called a scoby, which stands for symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast. That's what this white disc is kind of jelly-like that floats in this mixture during the fermentation. So this is a live bacteria. There's yeast in there. And then it also builds a lot of organic gases, B vitamins, antioxidants, and minerals in there. The health benefits, they're not quite proven yet, but there is a little bit of research on it. It's a health benefits. And some of these can have a little bit of alcohol generated during the fermentation process because the sugar is converting to alcohol. So you might see some of these have a little bit of an alcoholic flavor to them. So Colorado State also has a publication on making kombucha, if that's something that you would like to try. If you'd like to learn more about preserving food at home, our friends at Michigan State University and Penn State have done a really great job on creating a lot of different online classes that you can participate from your home. Some of these are at no cost. Some of them are minimal cost, maybe around $5, depending on the topic. So these websites will take you to those different resources and where you can sign up for these different classes. They have them throughout the year. And then I also put the link to North Dakota's resources. And then my website down here is linked to what I have for food preservation. Many, many resources that I've linked to help guide you to good information on doing food preservation safely. Our North Central Region has a newsletter that we put out every two months. We are currently working on the next issue. If you want to scan this QR code here on the right, that will take you directly to the website. It's actually managed by the University of Missouri. And you can sign up to get this newsletter electronically. So I encourage you to sign up for that. We're glad to share information. It's just a quick little two-pager newsletter that we put out bi-monthly. And it's called Preserve It Fresh, Preserve It Safe. So hopefully you'll take advantage of that. And then our links to our North Central Region group, links to all the different states. If you just go into the Google search bar and type in N-C-F-S-E-N, that stands for the North Central Food Safety Education Network, that will take you directly. The first thing that should show up is that website. So we encourage you to go to that and find out what resources other states have in our North Central Region group. And then hopefully that will help answer your questions on that. And again, this QR code, if you want to scan it to get to all the links that I have that I provided in the presentation, you're welcome to scan that. And then also it's on the North Dakota Extension website too. So looks like I got about seven minutes left. So any questions? All right. I'm going to go fast because I have to do a hard stop at three. Yes. If a pressure canner has both a weighted gauge and a dial gauge, do you typically default to the dial gauge when determining which pressure to process it? So it depends on the brand. I talked about the All American brand where they have both the dial gauge and the weighted gauge on there and they will tell you to follow what the weighted gauge says. I do know that with the Presto, they have a dial gauge canner and then it has what they call a counterweight on it. That counterweight is actually a 15 pound weight. So you could use that particular canner as a weighted gauge canner at 15 pounds of pressure. So you get it build up to 15 pounds and you'll see that weight start to wobble. And that's what you'll look for. So it is possible. It is possible to do that. But I do also encourage you if you have one of those national Presto, those four brands that I mentioned earlier to get them tested just to make sure you know where your dial gauge is reading. Here's another question about gauges. I just bought a weighted gauge for my Presto. Is there a way to test it so I know what I'm doing with it? Yeah. Now there's no testing to be done with that. You know, read the instructions, any canner that you buy. Always read the instructions on how to use it. I know that Presto has some videos on YouTube on what to look for as far as what the weight should be doing. Their weights will wobble and they should wobble continuously throughout the processing. If it stops, your pressure is dropped, but you also don't want it to jiggle too fast. Just a nice, gentle wobble is what you're looking for on a Presto weighted gauge canner. All right, next question. What regulations are there for farmers market type canned food stands? Are they required to use USDA tested methods and how would a consumer know? It's not a requirement. It depends on your states, rules and regulations. Many states have what they call cottage food laws as far as what needs to be tested. Here in Kansas, we do allow a lot of products to be sold through farmers markets, direct to consumers, what we call it. We have extensive publication on this whole topic. There's many of these recipes that we can test. Many of the states offer a service to help test your products and evaluate it to make sure it is a safe product to be sold at room temperature to be sold off the shelf. Otherwise, it might have to be refrigerated. Contact your local extension office and find out, especially for your state, what the regulations are. I'll also add in North Dakota, I would check with that local farmers market because they can always have more stringent requirements than say what we have for cottage foods. Exactly. Here's another question. When I take the jars out of the water bath, they have water on top of them. Is it okay to tilt them so the water runs off or does that affect the lid? We do not recommend to do that, mainly because your food could move and get in between the seal. Don't worry about that water on top of the jar. It'll evaporate. So when you take your jars out of the can or go straight up over straight down, leave the water where it is. It will dry up. You don't want to mess with the lid and the ring at that point in time because the lid is trying to do its job and seal your jar. So leave the water alone. It will go away. Another person says, I have a few outdated canning cookbooks of various ages. Do you recommend that I replace them with updated versions? Yes, I do. And I know Julie does, too. And I mentioned, especially the Ball Blue Book, you want to get Edition 37. That's the newest one. It has the bruschetta on the picture on the front of it. The latest USDA guide is from 2015. That's the latest one we have on that. Universities are going to keep their publications updated also. So I caution you on using old church cookbooks and things like that because, you know, you just don't know the safety of those kind of recipes that are in those kind of books. So it really is time to get up in the 21st century. And here's a really great question. I'm unable to find name brand lids. A few off brands are available. Are the off brands okay to use? Well, they're a little bit risky because I've seen lots of pictures of those off brand lids not performing like they should. They wrinkle up or the seals fail. I've heard many people talk about problems that they've had with a lot of off brand lids. I hate to say it, but a lot of these are not made in the US. And so their standards are not as good as what the Ball and Kerr company sells. It makes themselves. You know, you can't shop or really do your homework because there are some sneaky vendors out there trying to get whatever they can out there. So be careful. I'll ask my own question because I'm not quite remembering what they said, but the craft type ball lids are they the same jars and lids that are sold for canning? So the plastic lids or the wood lids and things like that, they're coming out with? No, I'm talking about you can go to like a Michaels type store and you can buy glass jars and lids that are I think they're the same. They are the same. Yes. So if you go to Hobby Lobby for example or Joanne Fabrics you'll see canning jars there because people use them for crafting, but they can be used for canning also. That's what I was remembering so I just wanted to confirm. Let's see. The last question I'm seeing on my list as I was copying these is about egg-liming. Do you have any information about that? That kind of falls along with the sodium silicate, the water glass process. I've tried to find information on that because somebody said that here a few weeks ago and I just cannot find anything to show that it's really a good way to preserve eggs so right now I just don't recommend that. And the final, final question is about other brands of canning jars and they specifically mention, I think they're called WEC. Yeah, the WEC jars are kind of a high-end you'll see jar that you'll see in higher-end kitchen stores or obviously on the internet, but those are a jar with a glass lid and it has a separate rubber ring on it and then there's little clamps that hold it together. We don't have any research done on those types of jars in their closures to know if it's a safe way to can. So it's best to use those to store cereal or cotton balls. It's really a good use for those kinds of things. All right, well thank you so much for the talk today and all these great resources and I certainly hope that everyone still on the call will check out the resources and especially our North Central Region network group of resources. So thank you everyone and thank you Karen. You're welcome, thank you. .