THat's impressive!

Wowzer! I don't even know what you have in those jars, but it looks delicious! Is this in a basement?

It's in the old cellar. Most of my old house does not have a basement, but when they added indoor plumbing, they dug under a corner of the house and made this small cellar for the pipes. It had the typical outside trapdoor entry - we had problems with frozen pipes in the winter and no good place to go when tornadoes were headed our way.

DH and I put on an addition with a full basement, and now you get to that old cellar from the new basement. The last picture was from the basement looking into the cellar.

Unfortunately it's too damp for storage of root veggies or squash and dry goods that aren't sealed up tight. We keep a dehumidifier running constantly, and the sump discharges year round. The cellar is about a foot lower than the basement - we quit digging when we hit ground water so the main basement stays dryer than the cellar area. That did cause some design issues as we ended up with an addition that is two feet higher than the rest of the house.

How wonderful!!! I love it! I wish I had time to can. What do you have in all those cans?

Wow, I'm impressed. I have some idea of how much work that represents. You're pretty amazing.

I always find these under (basements) and over (attics) spaces so interesting, since California homes typically do not have them. Your cellar looks wonderful. Looks like you are quite the canning maven!!!

LOVE it! It's just beautiful. I'm jealous of your canning know-how and your produce! My harvest was SO pitiful this year. Our summer was too late and too cool.

Cathy, it's so great to see your production!!

What did you decide on in the end for a canning station?

Wow. That's a lot of hours over the hot stove! Amazing.

plllog, I do most of my canning that involves large quantities of veggies in my summer kitchen.

For canning in the house, I have an area where the upper cabinet is the same height as the cooktop vent. This gives me enough room for the large hotplate and a big canner. This is my presto, the AA is a bit taller (can fit two layers of pints). I was making a batch of jam this morning so took some pictures to show how it works. I use my pressure canners for waterbath canning when I've got a decent quantity of jars. I also made up a batch of peacan syrup to fill up the canner.

Not a real good picture, I'm still learning how to use my fancy camera. And of course, the kitchen is a long way from done still. And it will eventually turn white. I ended up winning that battle. The countertops are temporary and we don't have any doors/drawer fronts installed yet. I do love all my big drawers though!

Turns out I can place the hotplate so I have enough room between the canner and cooktop to put a line of jars. With the induction cooktop, I can turn the heat off and leave the pot right on the burner with no ill effects. I had not planned on being able to do that but it sure makes things easier. There is also plenty of room on the other side of the hotplate to put down a towel and set the jars as they are removed after processing.

I take several hot jars out of the canner, fill them up, wipe rims, put on lids and rings and put them back in the canner and lift out another group.

By the time I'm done, I usually will have spills of jam/syrup or what ever I'm canning, but with induction it does not matter. Cleaning off the cooktop is not any harder than cleaning the same spills of a countertop. I use to move to the island, and then was dripping water from the jars to and from the island - now that does not happen either.

The range hood is powerful enough to suck most of the steam from the canner, but if I was to start all over, I'd put two range hoods side by side, with a big wood cover over them to make it look like one. I would not want one big one, as I rarely need them both on at the same time, so two lower powered ones would be great.

I love having the height to work under. I use this area as my baking center for now, as my real one isn't finished.

Here is a picture with better lighting to show how the uppers line up.

I had originally not wanted any uppers over that section of the counters - didn't want them over the sink either. DH kept insisting we needed uppers because we would need the storage, and wasn't happy until the design got changed to include them. Now he complains that they are too high and not usable.

So I asked him (yesterday) just what he needed to store up there anyway? He looked at me and thought a bit, and realized we had nothing to store up there after all. We have more than adequate lower storage, and will have even more when the island and baking center are done.

Now he admits we probably could go without those uppers, but we changed the lighting plan to go with under cabinet lighting, so now they are needed.

The kitchen got put on hold for most of the summer while I was busy with other things, now we are back to working (and fighting) on the kitchen. Not that we are really fighting, but in 30 years, this is the one thing we have totally not seen eye to eye on.

Just wanted to let you know that the pictures of your "pantry" filled me with happiness and nostalgia. Growing up in Vermont with one income from my father's teaching I knew wealthy wasn't a word that would be applied to us. However, when I would go down to the basement, turn the corner and be dazzled with rows of tomatoes, beans, peaches, jams, and jellies, I thought that surely we must be the richest people in town. Thank you for the trip down memory lane, and for providing the impetus to get my hands dirty and get my beds in and ready for spring at my new house.

I am so jealous of your canning prowess! It looks fantastic, delicious, and ORGANIZED to boot!

That is amazing!

Cathy,

Do you mind my asking what brand of induction plate you are using? I have a Viking one that I bought for a temp burner during my reno. I've been wondering if it is beefy enough (or wide enough) to handle my largest pressure canners. I find mine is just fine for dairy work such as pasteurizing, and cheese-making. While those temps need to be held precisely, I use smaller pots for them and keep just under simmer temps, not canning temps.

It's a very good idea to incorporate some none-range space for the induction top, but keep it under a hood, too, to move all that steam out.

I have to keep my filled canning jars stowed in large Rubbermaid boxes to avoid lid-corrosion from too-high humidity in my cold-cellar. Definitely not as aesthetically pleasing as open shelving like yours, but avoids wasting all the effort I've put into filling them!

L

The hotplate is not induction, but the cooktop is. Since all big pressure canners are aluminum I had to come up with some way to get my canning done when it's too cold to use the summer kitchen. I had a glass topped stove, and could use the Presto on that, but I was never brave enough to put the bigger AA on it. If we had gas/propane on the property I probably would have put in a gas hob for canning, but I wasn't willing to put a propane tank on the property just so I could can inside occasionally.

The hotplate is a flat surface electric element. It's a 220 amp unit to get more power, made by Cadco. It handles either of the canners with no problem, but it sure does not bring water up to boil like the induction.

My husband had to turn the gauge on the AA. It was situated so that if I put the vent pipe towards the hood, the gauge faced the back wall.

Cheesemaking sounds fun. I'd love to do that some day, but I suppose I'd better get that kitchen done before I start any new adventures.

Oh, Cathy, DUH!, of course all my pressure canners are aluminum and won't work with induction. I didn't do any serious canning this year since we are deep in temp kitchens for the moment. And I have been using my dinner-sized Kuhn-Rikon pressure cooker (which is steel) on the induction burner, so I simply wasn't thinking it through.

OK, scratch the idea of putting the induction burner near the range under the hood and carry on with original plan to do all canning on stove. Right!

Thanks for your reply!

L

Thanks for photos and your story. Very helpful and inspiring. You must be quite a gardener also. Haven't canned for years, so ... you make me feel guilty.

We're now using a dehydrator. Not the same as canning, but we're glad to be doing SOMETHING to preserve summer for the rest of the year. But I _could_ make some applesauce today and get out the canner...maybe?

Went to a funeral for a very old woman recently. Homily by son in law dealt with the "fruit room," formerly a space like your underground canned produce storage (which evolved into a purchased canned goods storage space as she aged). He said that when he had been married for a few years he knew he had become a real part of the family when he was allowed to go to the fruit room to fetch something for the first time. A point of pride all around, apparently.

Cathy,

I was waiting thinking I'd be able to give you a more substantive response--or else your set-up awed me into speachlessness. Thanks for posting it. Too funny about not needing the cabinets after all! Since they're there, you may yet find a really good use for them. I have some really high ups, and they're great for things like the Farberware I use once a year and the commercial metal boxes from things like cookies that are useful to have but a space hog to save. I don't want to reach or see these things, but I do want them in my kitchen for when I need them (now that I have the space). I have ladders. :)

Many thanks, especially, for the picture of the summer kitchen! It's much more charming than the description, and it's a treat to see it in action. The hotplate looks like it's working well for inside the house. Seeing them all together with your pantry tells a great story! Being a city girl who grew up with country values it warms my heart. :) And even compared with the country cousins, your produce is impressive!

Cathy, thank you for the pics and giving me a walk down memory lane, too! I used to spend quite a bit of time in the summer at my grandma's and grandpa's. They had a 1/2 acre lot near the city (Detroit) and had a large garden. I helped in the garden weeding and picking the fruits/veggies. Then I would help grams with her canning. Tomato juice, pickles, green beans, stewed tomatoes, and lots more. We did all this in a kitchen that was maybe 8 feet wide by 6 feet deep! I kid you not--the stove was in the center of the long wall. Turn to your left and take one step and you were at the sink. Turn to the right and take a baby step and you were facing the frig. Tiniest kitchen I have ever seen but oh! the wonderful meals grams fixed in that tiny space. I guess it's no wonder she was always so organized! Canned good were kept in the Michigan basement--a root cellar with a dirt floor and racks of shelves. I still miss her bread n' butter pickles and she's been with the angels almost 18 years. Thanks so much for taking me down memory lane today!

I'm posting this follow up in case anyone comes across this thread via searches.

My Cadco LKR 220 that I have been recommending for almost a year died 11 months and 2 weeks after I purchased it, with maybe 30 uses under it's belt. The warranty is "walk in" which means you pay the shipping both ways.

When I first bought the unit I thought something was wrong with the thermostat, and had a very nice customer service guy walk me through a whole bunch of testing, and he said it appeared to be working OK. At that time he said if it did go out, he would ship us a new thermostat and we could replace it ourselves - it is very simple to do. He said we would not need to ship the item back.

So, when the thermostat started acting very strange, I sent an email. That was a few weeks ago, and I've never gotten a word of response from Cadco.

DH called them after I got no response, and talked to a woman who said our only option was to box the item up and ship it to them. They would check it out, and IF they determined it was a warranty issue, they would repair it and we would pay to have it shipped back to us. No idea how long it would take . . . She did give us the name of the company we could order a new thermostat from, so at least we got that much info out of her.

The new thermostat costs slightly more than it would cost to ship the unit, and we would not have to wait, and the woman made it sound like they would do their best to prove we had abused the unit anyway.

We ordered the part, and are still waiting to receive it. I'm seriously unhappy to pay almost $200 for a unit that didn't even last a year, and from what I've researched, probably didn't work right from Day 1.

Now I'm trying to find the threads where I recommended this unit so I can update on my experience.

Cathy