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1.5.5 I'm really cheap. How can I reuse my canning lids?




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This article is from the Food Preserving FAQ, by Eric Decker ericnospam@getcomputing.com with numerous contributions by others.

1.5.5 I'm really cheap. How can I reuse my canning lids?

Penny-wise and pound-foolish. The botulism antiserum shot costs a
*lot* more than the $10-$20 cost of a few dozen lids. As a public
service, from the home office in Grand Rapids MI, the top ten Things
You Can Do With Old Canning Lids.

10. Windchimes
9. Coasters for the vacation house
8. Really boring mobiles
7. Palm protectors for smashing garlic cloves
6. Train your pet Chihuahua to catch teeny metal frisbees
5. 2 canning lids + 1 HD disk = yummy sandwich for your favorite USENET
FAQ maintainer
4. With tin snips, create several dollhouse-sized cookie sheets
3. Sharpen the edges, make the business end of a pizza cutter
2. Glue several canning lids into 1 slinky to contact those pesky
Venusians
1. Several hundred canning lids, stitched together make the perfect
dress for your Oscar acceptance speech... (those brass ones look
great, much better than AMEX cards!)

Seriously, there are some things you can do with old canning lids. You
might not realize this, but lids and the mouths of jars/cans are of a
fairly standard size. The Kerr lids for the narrow neck pints/half pints
fit many commercial jars, like spaghetti sauce and mayonnaise jars, even
those medium size salsa jars. I've found that the wide mouth ones fit large
tomato sauce cans. It means that if you store dried peas, lentils, beans,
pasta, sugars, flours, nuts, seeds, your dried vegetables, dried fruit,
jerky, dried herbs, fruit leather, etc. in reused commercial glass jars,
you always have a lid. Poke many large holes in an old canning lid, use the
lid/ring/jar as a jar strainer for bean and alfalfa sprouts. If you're like
me, and you cut the can lid off completely but you don't use all the
contents, you still always have a lid. If your jars have great seals, and
you have to completely des- troy the lid of a particular home-processed
can, you've still got a spare lid when you put it in the refrigerator. If
your SO has a workshop, and organ- izes screws, nails, loose change, spare
RAM chips, matches, etc in glass jars, your SO has a lid. Just don't can
with them, and if you save old lids, mark 'em well so you don't get
confused. Scratches on the top with a corkscrew do it for me, you even get
planned obsolescence that way. And for god sakes, don't pawn 'em off at a
yard sale.

 

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previous page: 1.5.4 What if I don't hear a pop from my jars?
  
page up: Food Preserving FAQ
  
next page: 1.5.6 How do I use a pressure canner safely and effectively?