Saturday Scripture Speaks - Providing for the Future with Oven Canning

She is like the merchant ships,
bringing her food from afar.
She gets up while it is still night;
she provides food for her family
and portions for her women servants.
Proverbs 31:14-15

Part of being a Proverbs 31 Woman is ensuring that our families are fed and cared for. You might say, "That's the husband's job!" Yes, he is to provide financially, but I think that Proverbs 31 illustrates for us the wife's role very well. This is mainly talking about the wife who fills her pantry with items to carry them over for the winter - the wife who prepares good, healthy & tasty food for her family - the wife who works hard to see that her husband and children do not go hungry.

I read a short piece in Countryside this week about oven canning. I'd never heard of this before, but since I had tons of quick cooking oats that I was afraid could become buggy over storage time, I decided to give this form of canning a try. It's what the Proverbs 31 Woman would do, isn't it? Wasting food is a bad thing. Anyway, I filled clean quart jars with the oats. Then I put the open jars on a cookie sheet and placed it in a 200 degree oven for one hour. Then, I wiped off the lips of the jars with a wet cloth (being careful not to get water in the oats!) and placed a new canning lid on each jar with a ring - one at a time, keeping the unsealed ones in the oven until ready to seal. The jars were extremely hot, so if you try this, remember to use a towel to grab them. Before long, I hard the familiar ping of jars sealing. Every jar sealed. When they were cooled, I placed them in my pantry for use later.

I strongly believe in the wife providing food for the future. When I survey my pantry and freezer in the fall and see all that I've worked so hard to put there - I feel GOOD! It is wonderful to know that my family will be fed when our lean winter months hit. God knows this and He provides me with the strength, energy, and desire to do it.