Fresh Preserving Discussion Boards

Hi there I am wanting to can food for our little one who is a yr now I want to cook up carrots and squash yellow and green squash i am not sure how to preserve them so that i can put them in the cabinet canned for a short amount of time i do not want to freeze the food in ice cube tray but i am not sure of anything else i can use besides a pressure canner. If anyone has any ideas and has done this before i would greatly appreciate your help with this. With the carrots I want to cook them diced up so that he can hold them and eat them as finger food. The sweet potatoes i recently baked some and mashed them up in ball freezer jar and froze them he is almost done with them we have two little jars left i fixed these on Wednesday September the 16th, 2009 so any ideas i would appreicate a lot thanks. momof4athome.

Instructions for pressure canning carrots can be found here:
http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/how/can_04/carrots_sliced.html

The sweet potatoes can be canned as chunks, but shouldn't be canned mashed as the density varies too much for there to be a safe canning time:
http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/how/can_04/potato_sweet.html

Summer squashes don't do well pressure canned. They would likely turn to mush. They pickle nicely, however.

Here are some instructions for canning fruit-based baby foods:
http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/how/general/baby_food.html

Hope this helps

Unless you add a lot of extra salt or spices to your family's food, a toddler should do well with just a bit of the family food mashed up after cooking. We are long past the baby stage at our house but I used one of the portable baby food grinders. They get sold under the name "Happy Baby" and such. They might be a bit difficult to find in the retail stores but are available, easy to use and wash up very easily. They do a very nice job of getting the texture smooth. I would can our veggies fairly plain, then heat/cook as usual, dish out the baby portion, then add whatever "extras" I was using. Have fun!