Important Information About Mold And Home Canning

Canning vegetables and fruits is a popular summertime activity for a lot of people, especially women in rural areas that have too much of one thing or the other grown in their gardens for their families to eat or for them to give away. Whether it is jams, jellies, marmalades, pickles, soups, or almost anything else, if it can be canned, someone is probably doing it during the harvest season.

A similar process is used in the commercial canning industry, but the boon of doing your own canning from home is that you know exactly what is going into the jar you are putting your food in. You have complete control over everything that goes inside and your exposure to pesticides and chemicals used on the foods in a canning factory is limited to what you use to protect your own garden from bugs and rodents.

Home canning also uses techniques that are tried and true to preserve food and prevent them from being contaminated by mold, yeast, and bacterias. Botulism and other diseases are caused by these contaminants and the canning techniques used to help prevent them are still in widespread use today. What can you do to help prevent your home canned goods from spoiling after you can them..? And how do you know if they’re spoiled after they’ve been on the shelf for a while..?

If you are a canner and have had some problems with spoiled or mold-contaminated jars in the past, then there are a few different things that could be causing your foods to spoil.

The first thing that you need to do is make sure that your fruits or vegetables (or whatever you are canning) is thoroughly washed and of good quality. They also usually require peeling if you want a quicker processing time.

If the food is packed too tight in the jars, then the temperature in the center of the jar does not get high enough for a long enough time to allow for the complete sterilization of what is inside. Pack food loosely in jars and use the time, pressure, and temperature required by the recipe.

Put the lids on the jars after filling them and immediately begin processing the food before any microorganisms can start to grow. Once mold spores get into the jars, you’ll have problems later on because a lot of times high temperatures simply do not kill mold spores, just like cold temperatures don’t tend to. Use sterile equipment and jars.

Lastly, if you find mold growing in one of your jars after you open it, the best thing to do is toss it. Soft foods will become completely contaminated by mold, unlike hard blocks of cheese and other dense foods.

Hidden Water Damage Can Creep Into The Most Common Areas Of Your Home

The bathroom and the kitchen are the two rooms of our homes that, when remodeled, can add the most significant amount of value to it. They are the two centers of our houses, whether we realize it or not. A good house is usually inspected by a few different factors and these two are generally the focal points of many home buyers. Home buyers want to know if a property has a good kitchen and if it has a good bathroom. Depending on what they see, it can make or break a sale.

Unsightly water damage can usually be prevented to either area of the home unless it is caused by mother nature, such as flood or hurricane damage. What can you do to prevent water damage to the two most important rooms of your home..? Similar things can be done in each room to help keep the value of your home from going down.

Taking a bath or boiling water on the stove gives off steam, but there is not always a way for the steam to get out of the room if there is no vent installed. There should be a vent with a fan in each bathroom of the house and the kitchen, as well, to keep the steam from being absorbed by the walls. Drywall that has been damaged in this way usually starts to sag after a while because it has absorbed so much water and not only this, but mold will start to grow on walls that catch steam like this, as well. This is the perfect environment for mold to grow in.

Any plumbing in your bathroom or kitchen needs to be checked on a regular basis for cracks or weak spots in its connections. Anything in your house that uses water coming from the water system in your home needs to be checked on regularly to make sure the chance of a leak sneaking up on you is minimal. Some leaks can sneak up on you while you are away from home or asleep at night, but a lot of time it is caused by just not keeping an eye on worn hoses or damaged pipes.

Sometimes a water heater is located in a pantry or in an area near the kitchen, so keeping a check on this is a good idea, too. The water heater should be set inside of a drain pan that is connected to the water system of your home so that if it does leak, any water is directed down into the septic tank or the sewer.