Well I don't have any "proper" canning jars, live in the UK and canning isn't that mainstream... to put it mildly. but I do save glass coffee/peanut butter/jam jars to reuse.
Storing contents of opened bags of dried beans/pasta.
Storing saved seeds.
Saving yeast cake from homebrew.. saves paying £1.50 ($2.50) for a new sachet of dried yeast. (sterilisation important though)
Sprouting seeds.
Future plans,
Intend to try making homemade yoghurt, - almost boil milk, allow to cool, add live yogurt , keep warm for 8 hours.. simples (apparently!)
and I'll use glass jars to store it.
oh, and hopefully this year I'll finally manage to make plum Jam, every year we waste about 10Kg of plums because they all arrive within a month or so.
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Let's have some fun with htis practical topic. I used to be a Ziplock bag junkie. But that's not exactly eco-friendly, post-Peak Oil behavior, so I tried to break the habit.
Enter the lowly canning jar. Here are some of the uses I've found for mine so far (other than canning), and you can re-use used lids for these!
* sugar bowl
* container for leftovers like stew and soup
* container to transfer opened metal cans of things like tomato sauce into (stored in the fridge, food in opened metal cans aquires a metalic taste)
* bug-free candy, snack or flour-storage jar
* store pins or nails
* cut a slot in the lid and you have a piggly bank
Any other ideas?