Putting Up Squash

I canned my squash harvest this year against FDA recommendations.   Here's the FDA page if you want to look at it.  They don't even want you to can it with a pressure canner.

Note:  The FDA has recommendations for canning meat here.  

So, just to be clear, the FDA does think it's safe to pressure can meat, but not pumpkin.

[Eyebrow raised.]

I pressure canned my squash anyway.    I roasted it, did not puree it, packed it in quart jars, and filled it up with water leaving an inch headspace.   Then I processed it at 10 pounds of pressure for 80 minutes - just what the book for my canner recommended.  It's an old book that came with my canner, lo those many years ago when my mom bought it.

Note:   The processing called for on the FDA meat page link above, for raw chicken with bones is 10 pounds of pressure for 75 minutes.   Raw.  Chicken. 

I think I'm safe.

If I had an extra freezer, I'd freeze it but freezer space is at a premium.

Also,  things get lost in the freezer.  They go in and are never seen again, like agents going into the Escher Vault in Warehouse 13.    Mysterious dark forces are at work in there.   I just know it.  

Also, freezers are vulnerable to power outages.  It's a bad feeling knowing that the contents of your freezer are slowly thawing out and that every time you open it to try to use some up before it goes bad you're just hastening the inevitable.

So,  I'm trying to can more and freeze less.   Or at least freeze only things that I can easily and safely bottle up in a water bath canner over an open fire if I had to --- like fruit.  

UPDATE:  All of that pumpkin was delicious.   A current search [3/25/14] shows that the USDA now says it's perfectly fine to pressure can pumpkin in cubes now: http://nchfp.uga.edu/how/can_04/pumpkin_winter_squash.html
After you process them, they often fall apart and look just like puree.