Reusing your canning lids!

First, let me say that Sarah at Sarah's Pioneer Living has posted another great video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QII8EfYmSBk

this time it's on reusing canning lids.

First, let me say, that I took the preserving food at home self study from the National Center for Home Food Preservation SCREES - USDA and University of Georgie program. I got 100% on all my tests, and have the certificate of completion on my wall right now. lol. Don't know if that means much, but I was proud of getting the 100% on all four tests. :)

During this study I read a lot of information about canning. Both low and high acid food. It was kind of a lark that made me take it since I had grew up watching and helping my grandmother and mother pressure can, boiling water bath and freeze food.

I learned at a young age that you do not.. let me restate that... DO NOT reuse your canning lids. But, I am going to tell you, I learned later (as an adult and doing my own canning) that this is a very expensive thing to do! Oh my. There are 12 lids to a box, and when you are canning you can go through 4 boxes in a day, and in the normal course of cooking for a day, you can use upwards of 6 jars of food a day... Well, you can see that it all adds up. I spent $2.59 a box on regular mouth lids last summer, and the price is only getting higher, with wide mouth lids even more expensive.

So, I have to say, I agree with Sarah fully. If your lids aren't bent, they have no rust, the gummy stuff is intact and still thick then reuse them. I check my food storage out all the time. I check for rust on the lids, I check to be sure everything is sealed and so on and so forth.

Although... I never throw even a bent lid away around here! If a lid isn't so badly bent that it's unusable, then it goes into the storage drawer. A lot of my dry goods (dehydrated stuff mostly) goes into glass quart jars and then a lid goes on them. If I buy bagged rice, then I put it in glass jars and put a lid on it. Mice and rats very rarely chew through glass jars! lol. It also helps with bugs and moisture to keep that lid on it. So, lids are never just tossed here at the house.

Rusty lids get glued into rusty rings and spray painted with rustoleum paint. then I stuff it with stuffing and fabric and turn it into a pin cushion or some other crafty thing gets done to them. I have an aversion to tossing things in the trash! lol.

Anyway, check out Sarah's new video, and leave her some feedback!