We have had several spectacular failures, so far not with the canner, but with other methods of food storage. The worst, was probably the lovely, hard-waxed cheese that we lovingly put in a plastic container to age. The we forgot about it for awhile. Until one afternoon, our kitchen also smelled like one of the cat's had died in it. Opening the plastic, to discover a putrid, seething, mass of goo, was right up their with my rotten potato experience in collage (this time stored in an ice chest). Yes, we should have known better, but we didn't.
Our most recent disaster was a plastic bucket full of fermenting beer that went off. We couldn't figure out what is was for several days. By which point, no one was willing to go into the kitchen. Except for my husband, who has almost no sense of smell and couldn't figure out what was wrong with the rest of us..until he found the bucket...almost no sense of smell is not the same thing as NO sense of smell
And, to the canning newbies out there, its not that many things don't can well, its just that most traditional methods of food storage are not an exact science. Something may turn out wonderful one year (like the baby corn) and horrific the next year (nasty canalized corn). The mystery may be easy to explain, like the ages of the corn or it may be harder to figure out. Best thing to do, is not to make to many large batches of any one thing, if you have a choice. Vary your recipes, even if you have a lot of the same major item to can. That way, if the salted stuff tastes good, but the unsalted is only fit for the chickens, you still have 1/2 of your original produce put away.
In general, I find that most stuff does keep better in the freezer, but even with a large one, we can't store everything there. And we can't even get Mason Jars over here in Ireland. So we do a combination of both. This year, I may try pressure canning for the first time, just to practice. Everyone I've talked to says that the results are better for frozen than canned meat. But in a doomer scenario it might be necessary to can as well as salt down freezer meat quickly.
Oh, that was another disaster, the first time we tried to cure pig meat...it was ghastly, horrible and we had to throw out the meat from two, entire animals. However, I'm glad we figured out what was wrong (wrong time of year, not enough salt, soaked too long, lots of stuff) because the home-cured and smoked meat my husband makes now, is some the best stuff I ever had. But again, we should have tried our first experiment with a small amount of meat. That way, we would not have wasted so much.
Good thread, and some good laughs....
Melodi