a day in the life of a latvian mom

I think I’ve just realised where my trust line is.

Recently I bought a book about canning. And while I already feel confident with water bath canning, pressure canning is a whole different level. It’s not something you casually experiment with—it’s about safety, not just taste.

And that’s exactly where my hesitation kicked in.

I started reading a new book from 2025, written by someone younger than me, confidently describing methods that felt off. There were ideas like fermenting meat and hanging it, but not in the traditional ways. It made me think. There are indeed old methods for preserving meat—salting, drying, curing—that have been used for generations. These methods follow specific rules, and you can’t just change them randomly.

And I realised: I don’t want my family to be the “experiment.” Especially not when it comes to something like pressure canning meat. That’s not a place for guessing or “creative interpretation.” If something goes wrong there, it’s not just a failed recipe.

So I did something that now feels very natural to me—I reached for an old book. Not on canning this time, but on a different subject… because I’m still on the lookout for a good, trustworthy pressure canning book.

And the feeling was immediate. Calm. Clear. Grounded. No fluff. No trendy language. No trying to reinvent something that already has a proven, safe way of being done. Just straightforward knowledge, written by someone who clearly understood the responsibility behind it.

That’s when it clicked.

Maybe this is my trust line:
When it comes to learning—especially things that affect health and safety—I trust knowledge that has stood the test of time, before AI, before the Internet.

That’s it!

So I’m curious— If any of you do pressure canning, I’d really love to hear your experience. How did you learn? What do you trust? What are your non-negotiables when it comes to safety?

Ilze