Sustainability Book Chat

Mastering the Art of Preserving Vegetables with Angi Schneider

• Deborah Niemann • Episode 25

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In this episode, Deborah Niemann is joined by author, blogger, and homesteader Angi Schneider to talk about the many ways you can preserve your garden bounty—without wasting money or time. 

Angi shares practical tips from her book, The Ultimate Guide to Preserving Vegetables, covering everything from equipment basics to smart preservation strategies that help avoid common pitfalls.

Whether you grow your own produce, buy in bulk at the farmer’s market, or barter with neighbors, this episode will help you make the most of every harvest without overdoing it.

What You’ll Learn

  • Why pickling opens up canning possibilities without pressure canners
  • Which vegetables ferment best—and the simple tools that make it easy
  • Creative ways to preserve potatoes, tomatoes, zucchini, and herbs
  • How to avoid wasting time and money on food your family won’t eat
  • The importance of following science-based safety guidelines in preservation

As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases, which help keep the lights on here at Thrifty Homesteader so we can continue to provide hundreds of free articles.

Angi Schneider's Books

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Deborah: [00:00:00] Hello everyone and welcome to today's episode. We have been on hiatus for quite some time and I'm excited to get back into the swing of things. And we are joined today by Angie Schneider who is an author and a blogger. She's the author of The Ultimate Guide to Preserving Vegetables and she blogs at creativesimpleliving. com. Welcome to the show, Angie.

Angi Schneider: Thank you. I'm so excited to be here with you.

Deborah: I'm really excited to have you because, you know, we don't all want to teach everything we do, which is kind of funny because my email provider, their motto is teach everything you know, and it's like, you know what? I don't think they really knew much about homesteaders when they created that motto.

Because food preserving is something that we do, but I just don't want to teach it. So when I come across somebody like you who does want to teach it, I get excited. So I'm really happy to have you here. So when [00:01:00] people ask me questions in the future, I can say, well, go listen to my podcast with Angie and check out her book.

So this book is awesome because it covers all the different types of food preservation, canning, fermenting, dehydrating, and freezing. I bet a lot of people saw the title of this episode and thought, Oh, you're going to talk about canning. Cause that's I think probably the first thing that pops into mind for a lot of people, maybe freezing too, which freezing almost seems like cheating, Oh, you just stick it in the freezer.

That's like, that's not really preserving food, is it? But what I want to talk about today is how different types of preservation work better for different fruits and vegetables, and since we've got spring coming up here really soon, I think that's a super important thing for people to think about before you decide to plant 14 cherry tomato plants.

Ask yourself, what can you do with all of the tomatoes from 14 cherry tomato plants, so let's get started with canning. [00:02:00] What does somebody need if they want to do canning? First of all, because all of these things require different equipment too.

Angi Schneider: Sure. So my book is specifically about vegetables. Okay. In regards to vegetables, unless you want to pickle a vegetable and can it as a pickled vegetable, you have to have a pressure canner. I know on social media, sometimes you'll see people not using a pressure canner to can their vegetables without pickling them.

But if you want to be a hundred percent sure that your canned goods are safe, you need a pressure canner. And you don't need fancy schmancy pressure canner that's several hundred dollars. Presto makes one that you can buy for $79 that gets the job done. It's fantastic. It does everything that you need to ensure safety when you're canning vegetables. Are a low acid food, and so they absolutely have to have a pressure canner unless you're [00:03:00] pickling. If you're pickling vegetables then you just need a water bath canner. If you don't have a water bath canner you can use a big pot and as long as the pot is big enough so that the water can be two inches. above the jars you can use like a big stock pot. You just, you need to put something on the bottom.

You could put like a layer of empty rings, like, the canning rings to put your jars on so that you don't want your jars touching the metal of the pot. You don't really need a lot of equipment. You need a jar lifter because you don't want to stick your hands in a boiling pot of water to get jars out, you know, so there are a few things that you need that are special equipment, but you can get, if you have nothing at all, you could get started with canning vegetables.

If you wanted to buy a pressure canner for less than probably $130. So that would be include your jars, your lids, your pressure canner, and [00:04:00] the tools that you need, like the jar remover, the tongs to keep, the canning tongs to get the jars out of the hot water bath. So it's really inexpensive.

As long as you don't, as long as you want it to be inexpensive, it can be really expensive if you start buying all the tools and all the fun new gadgets that are out, but if, so anyway, I'm really about being real frugal and because for me, that's one of the reasons that I preserve vegetables is to feed our family without going broke.

Deborah: And if somebody is listening to this, that was like me 23 years ago, they might be thinking like, well, what can you pickle other than like cucumbers to make, you know, pickles, um, which I learned, I was scared of pressure canning. And so I learned like, oh, dilly beans became a family favorite really fast.

And then I also discovered that, um. Even though you cannot can zucchini in a pressure canner unless you want complete [00:05:00] mush, zucchini makes great pickles too. Yes,

Angi Schneider: and you can with zucchini, you can even do like a mock pineapple with zucchini, like you chop it up and you can it basically in pineapple juice.

And it tastes just like pineapple chunks. It's crazy.

Deborah: Yum. Is that recipe?

Angi Schneider: That recipe is not in my book. No. If you can find it on like the National Center for Home Food Preservation, you can find it on their website. And that's a great website to be perusing anyway. But yeah, you can pickle cauliflower is so good pickled and that recipe is in my book.

There's quite a lot --carrots. You can pickle carrots, okra. If you like okra, I know, I don't know, some people don't, but

Deborah: I grew up in Texas, so I love okra, and I actually had pickled okra growing up.

Angi Schneider: It's good, right? Yeah, it's great. Yeah. So, yeah, there's quite a few vegetables that can be pickled, so you don't have to pressure can them.

[00:06:00] Yeah. There's actually like a three bean salad that can be pickled. And it's yeah, it's got some green beans, but then it also has dried beans in it. And so that, that's a really good one too.

Deborah: Okay. Cool. And you're going to come back and we're going to talk in depth about pressure canning, because I know most people are very scared of pressure canning. I know I was. You've got a book on pressure canning. And so, which I think is awesome. So you're going to come back and we're going to talk about pressure canning in detail. So if people want more details on that, stay tuned. So let's move on to fermenting.

 It's funny. I think fermenting kind of scares people to some probably just because most of us aren't really familiar with it. So sure. Yeah.

Angi Schneider: Yeah. And it's interesting because fermenting is actually one of the oldest preservation methods. Um, so if you've ever had sauerkraut, that's not pickled like true sauerkraut, you've eaten the [00:07:00] fermented vegetable. Fermenting tastes very much like pickling except for it doesn't have what that vinegar tang to it, harshness to it. So like my husband cannot stand pickles because he doesn't like vinegar, but he loves fermented peppers. he won't eat pickled peppers, but he loves fermented peppers. It just doesn't have that harsh flavor to it.

So, um, there's basically what I think of as two ways of fermenting vegetables. And one is like sauerkraut where you've taken the vegetable and you've shredded it in some way. And then you add salt to it. And salt is a preservation tool. So, or ingredient. So you add salt to it and the salt mixes with the cabbage and a pull or the shredded vegetable and it pulls out the liquid and it makes its own brine.

And that brine will when it mixes with the salt, it will become more acidic. Okay. And so that is [00:08:00] what preserves the the cabbage. And as long as All of the ingredients stay below the brine. It's going to be safe. So another way is like, if you wanted to make pickled peppers or or fermented peppers or fermented cucumbers, then you make a saltwater brine and you pour it over the vegetable.

So that's a little bit different. Different vegetables need a different saline percentage. And that is in my book. Every vegetable has its own chapter. And in the chapter, I talk about each of the different preservation methods. And I give the the salt, like, what salt water brine the percentage that it needs to be of salt to water.

That's another way you can add like garlic and dill and, you know, herbs to it, which makes it really yummy. I just, you can buy crocs. Some of them are quite pricey. I just like to use my wide mouth canning jars and you don't necessarily [00:09:00] need a specialty lid. However, since most of us have not grown up fermenting vegetables, I recommend using an airlock lid.

The one that I use does not use a water air lock. It's called nourished essentials, and it's just a black lid. It looks like a plastic canning lid that you screw on the canning jar. And it allows oxygen to escape because you want an anaerobic environment. So it allows oxygen to escape so that your jar doesn't explode.

So, because it has this, as it ferments, it makes lactic acid. And and it starts to bubble anyway, it pushes out the oxygen, it makes it safe. You can leave it on your counter different ferments take different length of time. And then you store them in your refrigerator. So fermentation is great for for preserving vegetables and actually adding more nutrients to your vegetables.

It's probably not something that [00:10:00] you would want to do. a ton of because in most climates you cannot leave them out for a year on the shelf like you could with canning. So like for me I do probably six or eight half gallon jars of cucumbers every year and then I just keep them on my outside refrigerator and then the then we do regular pickles.

You know, also that we can keep on the countertop, that are canned that we can keep in the pantry for longer term.

Deborah: That's awesome. I'm glad you mentioned using canning jars because that never crossed my mind. I just picture because I don't like my mom and my grandma did some fermenting and they did it in the big crock. And so that's what I thought you had to do, that you had to do these ginormous quantities. And that you had to buy the expensive crock and all that kind of stuff. And then somebody was like, Oh no, I use like a wide mouth, half [00:11:00] gallon canning jar, which just blew my mind.

Angi Schneider: Right. And you can't, like I said, you can't do it without the specialty lid. I just find that I get better, more consistent results. Um, when I use a lid because. a fermentation lid because I just I'm really busy like most of us and and forgetful like some of us and I don't always remember to like burp the jar you know because to let The lactic acid and the oxygen out. I just like the lids, but I just want your people to know that you can't do it without the lids. You just have to have more hands on time to take care of it.

Deborah: Yeah, and now we all have so many digital timers and stuff that does make it a little easier to remind you rather than having

Angi Schneider: sure if you remember to set them.

Deborah: Yes. Yeah, that's always my problem too. I know. [00:12:00] Complain about not getting things done because I forget people are like, well, why don't you set a timer? And well, I forgot to set the timer. Organized people in the world,

Angi Schneider: sure, they can probably totally do it. And I knew there were people who do it without any kind of special equipment.

I have just found for myself, because I know myself that it's better for me to invest in. You know, a couple, I don't need a lot of lids because you take them off and you put, you can just put a regular like plastic storage lid for the canning jar on there. And then reuse your fermenting lid for the next batch of ferments.

So you don't need tons of them.

Yeah. Have you used those glass weights that are meant to fit right into the. Canning jar to keep your vegetables under the saline.

Yes. That's what I use. I use, there's the glass weight that you can use.

Deborah: Okay.

Angi Schneider: If you don't have a glass weight, you can fill like a Ziploc baggie with brine and put it on top and, you know, [00:13:00] there's a lot of things that you can do.

And I cover a lot of those different ways in the book.

Deborah: Okay, cool. Moving on to dehydrating. I think the dehydrating was, oh boy, you know, I always try to find the cheap ways to do everything. So I'm just going to say don't try to use your car on a hot summer day to dehydrate. I thought that would be a really good idea.

Angi Schneider: Yes. Yes. Yeah. Especially if you live in a humid area, it's not going to really work.

Yeah. Yeah.

Deborah: Well, I completely baked a bunch of herbs. Oh gosh. I mean, nasty. I'm sure. Not. I mean, they were black. Like, within hours. They were completely black. And my car, instead of smelling like herbs, it smelled like something burnt.

Angi Schneider: Oh my goodness. Yeah. Yeah. Well, with herbs, a lot of times, and so I live along the Texas Gulf coast and so it's pretty humid here.

Of course we have air conditioning. So, [00:14:00] you know, so there's that, but with herbs, a lot of times I just lay them out on a, sometimes even just on a plate or like a, if I have quite a few, I'll lay them out on a dehydrator tray. It just let them sit out for a couple of days and then they're dehydrated.

So with herbs, you don't even really need a dehydrator. You can just lay them out and they will dehydrate. There's my husband and I went on a foraging walkabout with a local guy here. That's he runs a website called foraging Texas. And one of the things that he said was that for herbs, you want them to dehydrate really slowly instead of fast, just because it takes, yeah, just because it retains their medicinal properties better.

And and so that's what he was saying. That's where I learned that you just. You can just lay them out. They don't have to be dehydrated in a dehydrator. Dehydrating is another super old way of preserving food. We have some friends from Kenya and they, she talks about that that's how they still preserve a lot [00:15:00] of their food out in the villages as they dehydrate it. And and they just use the sun, it's not as humid. It's a little hotter. And they, so you don't need a lot of equipment to dehydrate. If you're going to dehydrate something that has more moisture in it, of course, you're going to want a dehydrator. Probably

I have 3 dehydrators, um, 2 of them I picked up at estate sales or garage sales for under 10. And they work just great. They're the round kind that stack. Then when I wrote the book, I thought, you know, I should really buy an Excalibur to try it, right?

Because that's what everyone thinks of when they think of dehydrating, that you need this Excalibur, which is like a square dehydrator, and it's got, you know, trays. Mine has nine trays. And I like it. It's fine. It's great. I don't think that it's any better, though, than the ones I found at The thrift stores for much cheaper I can do some things in it that I can't do in my other ones.

Like, if I wanted to proof [00:16:00] bread, or if I wanted to, you know, do yogurt, keep something at a certain temperature, the Excalibur is really nice for that. But for actually just dehydrating, if you can find something at a thrift store or in a state sale, that's great. I would recommend getting, having a dehydrator that has a temperature gauge.

Some of them just have an on and off switch and it's probably too hot for something like herbs. Having that temperature gauge is really nice. But yeah, and most vegetables, though, they're going to need to be blanched before they're dehydrated.

You need to keep that in mind when you're thinking about if you're going to dehydrate things. So, like, um, we dehydrate some potatoes every year. But I don't dehydrate all of them, like 40 pounds of them because I would have to blanch them first and then lay them out on the sheets and get them dehydrated and it would take a long [00:17:00] time.

So when I think about, say, when we harvest potatoes, or sometimes we don't even plant potatoes and we go to a you pick farm down the road and harvest from them. And I think that's super important for us to remember, too, that when we're preserving food, it doesn't have to be just what we grew if you have access to, you pick farms or even a local farmer we do sometimes I do some trading with another local farmer and get his seconds.

So like his cold strawberries, I'll trade honey for some cold strawberries and it works out really good for both of us. So for instance, if we were having potatoes, then I decide, how do I want to preserve these potatoes this year to make it through the year? So I want some in various method.

I'm going to can some, I'm going to can some plain. I'm going to can some. In a soup. So that's two different ways that I've canned them and then I'm gonna dehydrate some [00:18:00] and we like to use those for a casserole, like a, an au gratin potato type casserole and then I'm going to freeze some and I freeze them mashed.

And so I mashed the potatoes. Last year we froze 30 pounds of mashed potatoes. We obviously have a big freezer, but we froze 30 pounds of mashed potatoes in serving size bags, and we just now finished last weekend, our last bag. So that was perfect for my family. So this year I know that whether I grow them or whether I go pick them at the farm that I need 30 pounds for mashed potatoes frozen.

Deborah: Yeah. I'm so glad you mentioned that because I think a lot of people assume that if you're going to. be doing food preservation. You're doing it because you grow these things in your garden and you have an abundance and you just weren't able to eat it all fresh.

And that's really not the case. One of the big things we love to do is tomatoes. Because we like to do [00:19:00] pizza sauce and spaghetti sauce and tomato soup. And so that takes a lot of tomato plants. But if we didn't have a garden area big enough to grow all those tomato plants, we could go to the farmer's market and buy 20 pounds of tomatoes to bring home and can or freeze or whatever.

Angi Schneider: Yeah, and you know,, if you can find like local farmers that are willing to let you come pick. So the guy that we get the potatoes from last year, he had a little Facebook post and he just lives like 5 miles down the road. So it's super convenient for us. And he said, Hey, we need to harvest potatoes. We're getting a big storm in and they need to be out like in the next day or so. So if you come pick for every 3 pails, buckets you pick. You give us two and you get to keep one for free. And so I was like, okay, my 15 year old daughter and I, since you're the only one still home, we are tonight, we are going to pick up potatoes.

He had already [00:20:00] plowed the field. He had already done all we had to do is go pick them up, out of the field. And so it was really great. And so we brought home like 50 pounds of potatoes. So I guess we picked up like 150 pounds. So he got a hundred. For his to sell. So it was a win win though. Like we didn't buy potatoes all year.

And so it's really good to be thinking and building those relationships with people in your community. So that you have that opportunity and it really does make food preserving much less expensive and more frugal, more easier to justify the time, when you're either growing it or you're able to get it for much less than grocery store prices.

Deborah: That's awesome. I love we did so much bartering in the early years on our homestead because I had such a problem with growing some things. If I had an abundance of something, I loved being able to trade that with a neighbor for something that they had an abundance of.

Angi Schneider: Absolutely. And [00:21:00] it's a win win, right? The neighbor was excited, too.

Deborah: Yeah, exactly. So the last thing you've got is freezing which I think all of these have their potential pitfalls, but I think freezing probably is a big

I think a lot of people think like, oh, I can just stick a, stick some vegetables in the freezer and call it good, right? Yeah. Um, but it's a little more complicated than that.

Angi Schneider: Yes, it can be. Most vegetables, it's recommended that they get blanched before they get frozen. So, that being said, I don't always blanch my vegetables before I freeze them, depending on the vegetable, and depending upon how long I think it's going to be in the freezer.

So, if I decide to freeze green beans, which my family doesn't like frozen green beans, so I rarely do that, but sometimes I do it, and then just because I need to get them preserved somehow so they don't go bad. And then I'm going to use that. I know that in two weeks I'm going to can a vegetable soup [00:22:00] with other garden vegetables and I can pull those out of the freezer and use them in my canned soup.

So they're not going to be in the freezer very long, and so they're going to be fine, not blanched, but if I were trying to keep green beans in the freezer all year long, they would need to be blanched. So it is a little bit more, it is a little different, and they're not quite as easy as just throwing something in a baggie and tossing it in the freezer but there are some things tomatoes. And just be thrown in the freezer. Corn can just be thrown in the freezer. Although it's recommended that it gets blanched. But I think it gets really soggy when it gets, when you blanch it. Especially if you're doing corn on the cob.

Deborah: Back to the tomatoes. I was a die hard blancher. Okay.

Because you blanch them and then the skin just falls off. And then when you're ready to use them, you just pull them out of the freezer and dump them in a pot. Um, [00:23:00] but I have heard other people say that when you freeze them, that also, that in itself will make the skin just slip right off, slip right off.

Angi Schneider: When you thought, yes, so you do need to take, um, okay. I don't know what it's where the stem is. We call it the belly button. You've got to take the belly button. I don't know what it's really called. Just that, you know, where the stem attaches, um,

Deborah: belly button works.

Angi Schneider: You've got to take that off. So if you're doing something like a Roma tomato or a, like a Juliet tomato, or even a cherry tomato. You still want to take that off. Because it's harder. I don't know what happens when it thaws, but you can just slip that right off. You've already got the hole there. And so it just slips right off. If you leave that core part on, you don't have to dig out the whole core. You just need to take that stem part off that stem attachment.

Then it just opens up the skin. And so, yeah, when they thaw out, you can just slip it right off. [00:24:00] My kids, when they were little, they used to take the Roma tomatoes and they used to like to just squirt it, like squeeze it and squirt the tomato out of the skin. So if you have little ones, that's a great job for them.

Last summer, we were there, we had some crazy things happening. And I literally just threw Roma tomatoes in the freezer without doing anything. I mean, I rinsed them. I didn't, but I didn't take the time to cut the thing out. And so when I went, got ready to use them, it was so hard to get the skin off. Like I had to go back and cut that off.

And by now they're mishy. They are mishy. So you can't use them for just anything like you can't, I wouldn't use them for like canning salad tomatoes or a salad, but they make a great sauce. They make great tomato sauce or, and you can can them once they're frozen. You can then can them too. So you can use them in soups for canning or any kind of sauce for canning.

[00:25:00] So you need to retain the liquid. You need to put the liquid back in there. So they'll release a lot of liquid when they thaw and you need to add that back. So don't discard it, but yeah, they're really tomatoes are a great example of something that you can just throw in. So, part of it is knowing your climate if you're growing.

Well, if you're buying local or growing your things. So I would really encourage listeners to kind of think about when things are ready in their garden or in their area. So for me, because where I live, our gardening season is really weird. We get the bulk of our harvest in, um, June and maybe a week or two in July.

And then it's too hot. Like we're done gardening until September, probably. So. When all of that, like everything is coming in, in June. So we'll have, [00:26:00] tomatoes and green beans and squash and zucchini and onions and garlic. I mean, just everything. And so you have to prioritize your time. And so being able to just, wash the tomatoes, cut the belly button out and toss them in a bag and throw them in the freezer is a great saver so that I could do things like go ahead and get the corn done or the potatoes done or, decide what to do with all this masses of squash and zucchini things that don't freeze well, and then I can pull out and do something with.

I hope that makes sense.

Deborah: Yeah. What are some of the common pitfalls that you see when people first get into food preservation?

Angi Schneider: Oh, for sure. It's preserving things your family won't eat. That's the number one pitfall and we've all done it. We've all done it. Yes, we have. I have a friend whose family will not eat canned green beans.

And she canned a whole [00:27:00] bunch of them. And so that was a problem. My family does not want to eat frozen green beans. But I have frozen them in the past. And if there's too many of them, that becomes a problem or feeling like you have to preserve everything you grew. I'm a big proponent of using all the parts of the vegetables that we grow but at some point you don't preserve just because you have it like you preserve because it's something that you need and then you share the rest, so maybe that's giving it to a neighbor or maybe maybe it's bartering with it, or maybe it's taking it to your local food bank for them to use.

I do not prescribe to the idea that I need to have food for the next five years in my house. I preserve for about a year. I trust that next year I'm going to be able to find more food. [00:28:00] And I guess if that doesn't happen, we'll have to figure something out. But I'm not going to preserve especially like canning.

I'm not going to have jars on my shelf for five years. Yes, as long as they're safe, they're sealed, they're safe to eat. But they lose they lose their quality. And they lose their nutrients and so it's just not something that I want to do. So I think preserving too much and then preserving things that your family won't eat.

And so then you'll never use and it's a waste of time. And time is precious. It's a waste of money and it's a waste of resources.

Deborah: Yeah, exactly. And then if you're canning, those canning jars are tied up until you finally get the guts to get rid of them. Those jars just sit there with those vegetables in them for years.

Angi Schneider: Yes, they do. And that's not good. And at some point you have to [00:29:00] either break them open and throw them in the compost bucket or, give them to the chicken as a treat, but it is, it's a real problem that, that some of us have. Especially, I think, if we enjoy canning, or we enjoy food preserving, or we enjoy experimenting.

So what I suggest is that you is that you try small batches of things before and make sure your family likes it. So I'm the only one in my family that really, that still lives here in my house that really loves pickles. So I don't do a whole lot of pickles. But I'm the only one in my entire family that will eat fermented pickles, fermented cucumbers.

But I eat them every day, like for breakfast every morning, and so I know how many I need to make. And it doesn't matter how much, how many cucumbers I get from the garden. I already know how many I need for the year. And so after that is complete, [00:30:00] then I start sharing the cucumbers. Because, I don't want, I don't want that space to be taken up.

I don't want that clutter in my house and in my brain. So um, so yeah, so do small, small jars or small batches of things. And it's okay if only one or two people like something, do it for them, but don't do a hundred jars for them, right? Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.

Deborah: Yeah. Awesome.

This has been so much fun.

Angi Schneider: Yeah, it has been fun. I think the other pitfall would be maybe not following safe recommendations. And so the website that I mentioned earlier, the National Center for Home Food Preservation is a great resource for, they're the ones that are managed now by the University of Georgia, which pretty much does most of the canning research and food preservation research these [00:31:00] days. And so it's a great resource for people.

Deborah: Yeah, I'm so glad you mentioned that because I get frustrated, my quote unquote specialty is goats, and I get frustrated by all the misinformation that gets pushed out there in social media about goats. But I can't imagine being a canning specialist and you must just have to close your eyes and ignore half of the stuff on your newsfeed.

Because that's not just like, oh, maybe a goat will die. That's like, oh, maybe a person might die, you know, it's got to be so frustrating to see some of this stuff like, oh, my grandmother did this for her whole life and nobody died and you know, it's like, well, yeah, the first time I used my pressure canner, I made an unbelievably huge mistake.

I started timing the minute I closed it rather than when it reached pressure. Sure. So I didn't, I, you know, it probably processed for half the amount of time it should have. Nobody [00:32:00] got sick. But I'm just lucky, you know, I just got lucky that day.

Angi Schneider: Right. And so now that you know, better, you're doing better.

Right. And I think I agree. I think other grannies would too. Right. Like, um, yeah, I can't see my grandmother doing something that she knew was unsafe. Right. And so I, You know, what I like about having the guidelines is that, um, is that it takes luck out of the equation. Right. Like, I don't have to guess and I've done some things like you did.

I used to make a spaghetti sauce. I canned it once without, uh, it was just like a homemade recipe. I did it. I canned it. It had Parmesan cheese dried in it, and I water bath canned it and we were fine. Nobody got sick, but I'm not doing it anymore. . Yeah. Right. 'cause I want, I [00:33:00] want to know for a, I want a hundred percent assurance that if I follow these rules mm-hmm

We are safe. It is, you know, and that, that is what following the rules does for you. It's a guarantee. Yeah, I think they've taken all of the luck and the variances for climate for homes for, I think they probably even added some some wiggle room in their processing times. To make up for possible user error. So for me, I have no problem at all saying I don't care what people do in other places, or I don't care what other people do in their own kitchens. But for me, this is what I'm doing, right? And there's plenty of room for creativity without within those guidelines, because they give you ways that you can make substitutions that are safe and tested.

And yeah, I think it's really important. And it's a shame that there's so many on social media. There's so many [00:34:00] people promoting things that maybe haven't killed anyone that they know of, but technically safe. And I don't understand why would you do that? Like I am somewhat of a not a rule follower in some ways, like I really I don't like being told what to do, even if it's by myself sometimes, and I certainly don't like to be told what to do by someone else.

Deborah: Yeah. But

Angi Schneider: when it comes down to something like this, I absolutely am a role follower.

Deborah: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I make soap too. And I, cause I'm one of those people who's like, why, why are you sure? Like what if I tried this, but when it comes to making soap I'm convinced I believe the science like, yeah.

We're playing with lie here. Right. So I, I know I need to follow the rules. Yeah. Well, thank you so much [00:35:00] for joining us today. I know this is going to be so helpful for people. Canning and fermenting and all this stuff is so cool. And it's just really important to have somebody to follow so that you know you're doing it all right and you're not taking any of those risks and stuff.

So thank you so much for joining us and I want to remind people that the name of your book is The Ultimate Guide to Preserving Vegetables by Andy Schneider and they can find you online at Creative Simple Living at your website, on Instagram, and also on Facebook. Yes, thank you so much, Debra. This was great fun.

Yeah, thank you.