Entry the twenty-fifth: Extreme Canning Frustratrion

Raaaarrrrgggh.

Last night I used my pressure canner for the very first time. I've canned many a thing with boiling water, but never with superheated steam. My wonderfully sweet husband reread through the instruction booklet and walked me through it, step by step, as I prepared the ingredients and readied the hot sterilized jars.

The recipe told me to leave 1/4" headspace, so that's what I did. Even when my husband pointed out that the canner instructions said to leave twice that. But me? I followed the recipe. Grumblegrumblegrumble.

The first indication that something was wrong was when I opened the cooled-for-the-allotted-time-so-not-going-to-explode-and-scald-anyone canner. The canning water was cloudy and smelled a lot like lemon and egg. At first I thought one of the jars had broken (this happened to me once when I made pickles, but I think in that case it was because the room temperature cukes did not play well with the boiling water), but no. The largest jar had leaked approximately half its contents into the water during the process, but then sealed when cooling.

Concerned by this and the now-completely-filled-with-no-headspace-WHATSOEVER jars, I started Googling. And getting answers. And now I am extremely frustrated.

Turns out it may not be safe to can lemon curd (yes, this was the origin of the lemony eggy water), even with a pressure canner. And yet Linda J. Amendt's Blue Ribbon Preserves instructs me how to do it.

I don't know what to do. This book has forty-one reviews on amazon.com and all but (I think) three are glowing. Her book is published by Penguin. It didn't occur to me (before all that Googling) that her recipes might not be safe. Raaaaarrrrghh.

I've posted a "please help!" question on gardenweb.com and am hoping for a reassuring answer. But in the meantime, I Am Not Happy.

Here is a picture of an adorable dormouse to mitigate some of the grouchiness of this post.