If you recall, I was sent some reusable Tattler canning lids to review several weeks ago. I wrote the review based on positive feedback I’d heard from my friends about Tattler, but I’ve been waiting for my tomatoes to finally turn red so I could actually can something myself and use my new lids!! Finally, last weekend I was able to play with my new “toys”.
I’m very excited to share, in response to many of you asking about Tattler lids, “Do they really work?” YES! They really work!
Because I was so giddy with excitement over my first canning experience of this season, and because based on this happy jar sealing experience, Tattler and I are going to become extremely close friends, I got a little bit camera happy.
Here we have my Tattler lids sealed on tomato sauce jars with okra, peppers and cucumbers in the background:
Here we have an extreme close up of the Tattler lids sealed on the tomato sauce jars. I think their smiles look so nice in this one, if in fact Tattler lids can smile (and I think we would all agree that they can, indeed, smile):
Here they are again, sitting next to their box with my water glass to the right, and my bouquet of last week’s birthday flowers in the background:
And here is a picture of three of my boys painting last Tuesday. While I love my Tattler lids, I love my children more. Sometimes I’m guilty of snapping pictures of weird things like butter splattered on pineapple and taking umpteen pictures of canning jars at a variety of angles, and I fail to take pictures of my children painting dots with q-tips.
We have been studying Australia, and came across a special painting style the Aborigines use: Warlpiri. We decided to try it. Unfortunately, all of our paint colors except red and yellow were dried out and crusty. Therefore, my kids got to paint Warlpiri art using only red, yellow and orange for color choices. All of our paintings looked kind of like an Australian sunset, but it sure was fun.
How does the picture of my boys relate to Tattler and canning tomato sauce? It doesn’t. Although, if you look real close at my pantry doors right behind Elias, you can see a plastic knife stuck through the door handles. I first noticed that Malachi had parked his “weapon of the day” between the pantry door handles while my arms were full of freshly canned tomato sauce jars, which made it impossible to open the doors with my foot, which had been my original plan. After setting all of the tomato jars back down, I may or may not have yanked the knife out with a grimace and flung it into the living room so that I could resume my task.
I bet you didn’t know that sometimes finding my boys’ toys in precarious places all over the house causes me to fling knives into the living room.
Although now that I see a picture of it here, I find the knife through the pantry door handles rather endearing.
Remind me of this cuteness tomorrow after I’ve just tripped over a lightsaber.
Tracy Compaan says
Laura, you had me laughing through your whole post. I LOVE your sense of humor. I’m very happy for your new canning lids, sorry for the limited paint colors, and very tickled at the thought of you throwing knives. Thanks for the great smile to end my day. :)
Hannah @ Treasuring It Up says
Haha! Oh you crack me up! Question – not about Tattler lids but about your canning – it looks like you have the same problem as me with tomato juice bubbling out of the top when you boil them? Did that happen to you? If so, do you have any idea how to fix it? It’s so frustrating :-/
Tammy says
When the time is up in the canner, turn off the burner and take off the lid. Let your jars stay in the water for 5 minutes, and then remove them. The water won’t siphon out the top.
Laura says
My tomato sauce didn’t actually bubble up and over in this case – the liquid in the jar had kind of separated after sitting all night – so I shook it up before taking pics, making it look like it had bubbled up. :)
Sarah says
I find I don’t have a siphoning problem if I leave plenty of headroom. If the recipe calls for 1/2 of headroom I leave just over 1/2 inch.
Emily says
Pretty sure that’s actually a sai, not a knife. :)
Laura says
I should really get my weapons straight. I called a gun “a gun” yesterday and my six year old corrected me, “Mom actually it’s a AK-47”. :)
Gretchen says
I have to say that I had the same problem with taking more food pictures than pictures of my kids so I purposefully started doing our “week in review” and this helped me to remember to take pictures of the ordinary and the fun stuff we did too.
Also, I have used the Tattler’s as well. Just be careful when you remove them – that is the hardest part.
Heather says
What happens when you remove them? Please inform us.
Gretchen says
Oh – it is no big deal except that you have to gently slide a butter
knife between the lid and the rubber seal to break the seal to get
the lid off. And you do want to be careful because you don’t want
to break the lid. I forgot and just used a can open thing on
one like I do with my regular lids and cracked it:(. The knife
works just don’t hurt yourself when you get too impatient. Not
that I would know anything about that.
Denise says
Thanks for the post about the Tattler lids! Sure wish someone local would carry the lids for sale. I’ll have to order online. My biggest question is how they work the year after … and the next year … and so on.
Tiffani says
That is hilarious! Thanks for the laugh, Laura :)
Next year: Tattlers.
Kelly says
I am Australian, reading your blog from all the way over in Australia and I thought you and your boys might find this interesting… When aborigionals paint dot paintings they make their paint out if ground up rocks and ochre. So that means that all the colours they use are yellow, red, orange and brown type colours. So even though you were only using red and yellow, you were pretty spot on!
Laura says
Well how about that? We were doing it right and didn’t know it! :)
Lori says
Too funny! Around here, it is legos…the little bitty kind that make you almost lose you religion when you step on them! and as long as you are not throwing the knives AT SOMEONE, then throw away!
Vickie says
What do you do with okra? My daughter planted some in our garden and it is doing better than anything. I have a frig full but don’t know what to do with it. I mixed some in with zucchini one time and we hated it.
Lori says
roll it in cornmeal and a bit of flour and fry it!
Laura says
I slice it and fry it up in olive oil – just long enough that it doesn’t get slimy. We love it! Or we’ve done it the way Lori recommended and it’s super good!
Michelle says
We have been perfecting our okra recipe for several years, as it is our best crop each year-lol.
We first dredge in flour that is salted and peppered, then dip in egg with some liqiud hot sauce, thedip again in a corn meal, flour, bread crumb mixture that has aseasoning salt and also some chili powders. We can’t fry these up fast enough, our teens go crazy for them!
Rachel Beran says
I am new to your blog…and I am enjoying it thoroughly. :) Thank you for this review. I want to try the tattler lids. Too bad I didn’t have them before I canned 101 qts of applesauce this past week. lol Next time! :)
Jenny says
Funny, funny post. Between the plastic knives, light sabers, and dried up paint, we could almost be in the same house : )
Mommy had a little tantrum the other day after picking legos out of the seal of my front loading washer. That doesn’t mean there are fewer legos on the floor this morning though. *sigh*
We are loving your blog, and loving your recipes. All three of my boys gave the cheeseburger mac an enthusiastic thumbs up last night. Hubby and I were talking about it when the middle guy chimed in and asked “what is hamburger helper?” it made me smile.
Thank you so much for all of your hard work. Please keep it up, we love it!
Erin S says
Canning chicken today – too bad I haven’t ordered any Tattlers yet. By the way, happy belated birthday!
Trudi says
Thanks for the great post and the laughs! One question since I haven’t been canning very long, and haven’t canned tomato or spaghetti sauce . . . YET! I noticed in your pictures that the top of the sauce is well below the 1/2″ headspace. Was that intentional, or does this happen because the sauce cooks down more while canning? Does that affect the storage time of the canned product? The only thing I’ve canned so far is jam, and I had one jar that was only 1/2 full and processed it anyway. I was told I shouldn’t store that one and just eat it first, which we did. Was just wondering how critical headspace is . . . Thanks!
Laura says
The only reason my sauce is not higher in the jar is because I started running out of sauce but was determined to finish off one more jar! I took a little out of each jar to “fill” the last one. Silly, I know. I’ll probably want to use those jars up first.
Dione says
After putting up 18 qts of spaghetti sauce, 6 qts of salsa, 11 pts pickles, 17 pts pickled beets and 46 pts of cherries… Will have to place an order for those lids for the rest of my stuff. Buying new seals adds up quick and the reusable fact interests me greatly. Love the knife, thought only I had moments like that:)
Jennifer says
Question about the tattler lids. I almost bought some at lehman’s recently, but decided against it . It appears to be a 2 step process, you put down a ring of some sort, then the lid. This looked like it could be difficult while everything is hot. Plus I didn’t know if you have to replace the small rubber ring each time you use them or is evertying completely reusable? Also, wondering why your jars aren’t full. I leave headroom, but I always though if the jars were not full that I couldn’t seal them up. So last night I had one that was just about 3/4 full and I didn’t bother sealing it at all, just added it to something else to try to get full jars. I didn’t think you could, but it looks like you can so I was wondering if you left that much room on purpose or if you lost some in the canner like what happens to me sometimes. Thanks!
Laura says
It’s much easier than it sounds! You can reuse but the rubber ring and the lid. All you do is place the rubber ring on the jar, place the lid on top and screw the metal ring over the jar. You have to leave a little bit of “breathing room”, as in, you don’t screw the ring on tightly. Run through the water bath, THEN screw the lid on tightly. After it’s sealed, you can take off the metal ring.
And why I didn’t fill my jars – silly reason really. I was determined to fill one last jar, but didn’t quite have enough, so I took a little from each jar to finish the last. I’ll have to serve those FIRST out of our stash, because the extra space in there won’t allow them to store as well.
Heather says
I used the tattler lids for the first time this year and I love them. I thought they would be difficult to use but they’re actually pretty easy and the seal seems just as tight as the disposable lids. I use tongs to pull the lids and rings out of the hot water when I’m ready to put them on the jar. They don’t hold heat for very long so it doesn’t get too tricky.
Emma Filbrun says
I have always reused Ball canning lids–my mom started doing that out of desperation one summer when lids weren’t available for love nor money. Yes, I know “they” say you can’t reuse them, but I just look at the lids carefully to make sure they’re still flat and check the rubber to make sure it’s still soft, and they work better for me than new ones! I almost always open the jars by popping the lid loose with a spoon at the spot where the threads come closest to the lid, since that doesn’t bend it like a jar opener does.
cathi says
I also used to reuse to ball canning lids until my husband opened a jar of tomatoe juice and it exploded at him. Also used to not hot water bath if the lids popped down on their own, but it’s just not worth it. 20 min to hot water bath, $1.50 for a pack of lids vs. someone you love getting sick from something you canned??? Hospital bills are way more expensive. Look up Botulism, that’s some scary stuff.Don’t want to freak you out, but it’s better to be safe than sorry. Happy canning.
Erin S says
Do the Tattlers seal like Ball lids where they become concave and you can’t push them down in the middle or is it totally different? I’m just a little confused how you really know they’re sealed. I really like to hear the ping as I pull jars out of the canner, probably won’t get that with the Tattlers.
Laura says
No, they don’t “pop” or become concave – you simply take of the ring and check to see that the lid is sealed. You can definitely tell – those suckers aren’t coming off for sure!
Vickie says
I love the sound of the lids popping too. But the $$ saved in not having to buy new lids will be worth it. The Tattlers I used were easy to tell that they had sealed.
Angelina says
At first glance I totally thought the title was “tattler KIDS and knives” so I thought it was going to be a post about your kids tattling on each other about knives! ;-)
cathi says
Thanks so much for the info on the tattler lids, definitely will purchase for next season. I read the post regarding reusing canning lids and although it does work, it is just not worth it!!! I also reused lids a couple of times and thought “hey these are sealing-what’s the big deal?!” My jars sealed well, until a batch didn’t. My husband had a couple jars explode on him. Same thing with doing the hot water bath. Used to have salsa jars seal up before doing the bath so started skipping the bath-NEVER AGAIN!! I encourage everyone to read up on Botulism. Not to scare you but to make you aware. Be Safe, Be Clean, and Be Educated. Follow the directions and when in doubt ask.
cathi says
Wanted to say that if you end up with extras in your garden, please contact your local food shelf. Many need fresh fruit and veggies. Usually will not take canned produce. But instead of letting it rot, take the extra few minutes to pick what you aren’t going to use and give to someone who could. I took 15lbs of tomatoes to our food shelf in Iowa today, 10min to pick, 10min to wash and sort(my choice to do so) and 10min to deliver. Granted,depending on where you live the delivery time may be different, but there are people who will appreciate what you donated. And if you don’t want to donate to a food shelf there are many older people who don’t have the ability or the space to garden. Give Away What You Can’t Use. please. You will make somebody’s day. Next year when you plan your garden buy/plant an extra plant or two for donation. Hey, it can be a tax write off too(if that makes it more appealing). Anyway, I guess what I wanted to say was, that if you can, help someone who isn’t able to help themselves…the goodwill that you pass on will continue to spread!!