Larnin' from Grandmother YouTube

This year has seen a number of firsts:

• first pressure canning (beans, and beets now, too!)
• first time planting several things (okra, sweet potatoes, leeks, and soon turnips and cabbage)
• first time making sauerkraut

how does one pressure can? I mean, you can read the manual, but I'm a watch-and-learn kinda gal. I would have gone to visit Matt's Grandmother Mary V, but that isn't an option anymore and I don't know anyone who cans. So, what did I do when I wanted to see it happening?

I visited Grandmother YouTube. Yes, YouTube is being used now for instruction on just about anything....including, it seems, pressure canning. See this 9-minute video on canning green beans from Wolfcrik, and also see the other canning videos this user has uploaded.

Ah, now, how do we make sauerkraut? Real, fermented sauerkraut? I didn't know, but I wanted to do it (see an upcoming post about my great great grandmother Amelia). Well, now, I sat down at the foot of Grandmother YouTube again and found three wonderful videos:

• This one, from Kitchen Gardeners International, is about 7 1/2 minutes long and does a really good job with details
• This one from a woman in Alaska also has a nice bit with a cute kid who will gladly eat the cabbage cores. It is about 7 minutes.
• And this one from a homesteader in Alaska shows the process via another method (I must get one of those knives for cutting veggies in the garden!)

There are a few other thing I want to try for the first time this year, such as making Greek yogurt and cheese. Grandmother YouTube came through yet again with this wonderfully quick 10-minute video on Greek yogurt. I haven't looked up cheese making (yet) but I'm sure there are some out there.

So many people watch silly videos on YouTube. (I do, too, have you seen the spoof of Total Eclipse of the Heart? Or Sham Wow?) But there are a lot of really good instructional videos on the system, too. Take a look, you may be surprised.

What has Grandmother YouTube taught you recently?