Canning 2014

I thought I would give you all an update on my canning this year.

I have to say I have done less canning than some years because the produce just didn't grow this year. We had a late cold spring. Then monsoon rains, hail, and wind. It has just been a tough year for gardening. I had a handful of blackberries but they were so bitter I let the birds have whatever was out there.  The lettuce grew late and we got ONE measly cutting from it.

I would have to say our largest crop this year was squash and zucchini which is pictured in the first photo below. (Along with a lovely set of toes...oops). I froze some mix for this winter in hopes I can get kids to eat some. If not it will be hubby and my meals.  We only had enough cucumbers to eat fresh. No canning of my sweet relish!!!!! I hope I don't run out as I eat that on my hamburgers all year long. I have also canned more green beans than ever before. We had both pole and bush beans. I have to say I like the bush beans better even if they are hard on your back. The pole beans get so large and stringy that it just isn't fun to process those things. Notice also the peppers are missing from the photo. We have two - yes TWO peppers finally growing on the plants. They are poor. I don't know if it is because they were crowded out by the sunflowers, the evil vine weed crap choked on them too much or we just can't grow peppers. It is probably a combination of all the above because we have gotten decent crops of peppers before.

This next photo deserves a paragraph all to itself. Yes, we did get about 3 gallon bucket of peaches compared to the 100's of pounds last year. I still have plenty canned up so I think we will be OK. What I wanted to point out is the size of the few peaches we did get. THEY ARE HUGE!!!!  I didn't have a softball to put beside these peaches so I put a pint jar instead. As you can see one would fill a pint jar if you could get it shoved inside the jar. We are enjoying these fresh as they run down your face and arms as you eat them. Nothing quite like a tree ripened peach. (Yes they are my favorite.)

In this final photo I wanted to show off what about 7 gallons of tomatoes ends up with when you place them in canning jars. I made pasta sauce, spaghetti sauce, and some plain old tomato and onion sauce.  I think that was my largest tomato picking for the year. There seems to be a lot less on the plants now and i am OK with that. :-)

This weekend I canned V-8 juice. You need 22 pounds of tomatoes to yield around 6-7 quarts of juice. You also use carrots, peppers, onions and celery. It is SO delicious that v-8 in the store is 4th class compared to this stuff. Every time I push that cooked combination through my grandmother's food sieve I think of her and smile.  I also started my canning of potatoes. It was quite the ordeal to figure out if I could even can red potatoes. That is all that grew in our garden this year and my ball book only says to can white potatoes. So I researched, asked fellow bloggers, asked the extension agency and even asked the United States potato board!  I got about 50/50 on yes/no to canning red potatoes.  Some say the sugar is to high, others say starch is to high, others say they hold up better but need to kill bacteria. I settled on yes I am canning these puppies. I pressure cooked them so I believe all is well.

I have yet to start canning apples. That is the last canning crop of the year. The one tree is average and the other tree has a lot of small apples on it. It will be plenty for us and I am sure the food pantry will once again get some of our extras.

Apples

Yep first it was peaches, now it is apples.

100's and 100's of pounds of apples.

Enough apples to make me whimper in defeat.

Here is a nice shot of some apples freshly picked.

This shot here is of some BBA's as I call them. Big beautiful apples still on the trees.

This shot here is of one of the trees.  You can see a the top how the branches broke from all the apples.

Dehydrated apples are SO yummy and easy to make. This first shot is of the apples freshly sliced and placed on the dehydrator shelves. Yes, I hand peel and cut each apple. Hubby helped to peel when he wasn't picking.

This shot is what those apples look like when finished. Still nice and extremely flavorful.

Here is a sampling of some apple pie filling for great desserts this winter.

The final photo is a sampling of the apples we gave away to food pantries and homeless shelters. I just added it up and we gave 1,030 pounds of apples to these places alone! That does not count all the apples I processed, the apples we gave to friends and family, and the apples that ended up in the garbage because the were not edible.

I put away all my canners, jars, and supplies tonight. I have the dehydrator doing the last batch of apples. Canning season is officially over. My gosh now it is holiday time.... Just shoot me now.

Peaches.

Beautiful yellow round orbs. I think it is my favorite fresh fruit.
Sweet, fuzzy, extremely juicy.
A fruit in the almond family, yes a peach.

The good: This food is very low in Saturated Fat, Cholesterol and Sodium. It is also a good source of Dietary Fiber, Vitamin A, Niacin and Potassium, and a very good source of Vitamin C.
The bad: A large portion of the calories in this food come from sugars.

Peaches have been consuming my life for the past 2-3 weeks. They were EVERYWHERE in my home. The entry way, the refrigerators, the counter tops, the garage, the laundry room, the freezer....ahhhhhhhhhh.

I made spiced peaches, frozen peaches, peach sauce, canned peaches, peach jam, peach cobbler, and peach crisp.

We had 3 trees that over produced. We had literally 100's of pounds of peaches.  In addition to all the canning and freezing and cooking I did, I also gave peaches to friends, family, coworkers, the church, and people walking down the street. OK so maybe not to people down the street but I did give 150 pounds (yes you read that right) to the local food pantry.

I'm tired and there are two fully loaded apple trees staring at me every day begging me to lighten their load.
WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Canning - canning - oh and more canning

The blogging is suffering.

Canning this time of year takes precedent.

This week has been green beans, corn, blackberries with relish yet to be made.

Last week was green beans, beets, blackberry jam and cucumbers/pickles.

On top of canning you need to include the items we are eating fresh that take time to dice, slice, and otherwise prepare for eating.

Oh yes, did I mention I dehydrate food also? This year it is zucchini! They taste like chips :-)

Horrors I don't even have any photos of the completed work but I do have one photo from last week showing the beets before I processed them.

So blogging will start up again, just not much before the frost hits! :-)

 

Canning!

I thought for today's blog I would share some photos of all the hard work I do in my spare time. OK, so it takes up ALL the time that I am not at my day job earning money, or running around with the children... I have to note that hubby has been very helpful in this endeavor so I can't take all the credit here.

Sitting back and looking at these photos makes me think - wow we really do a lot of work to enjoy this tasteful food. We plant, tend, harvest and process it all ourselves.

These are by no means "professional" photos but I do my best. So now sit back and enjoy.

First, we have some pickle relish. I love all the colors in one jar.

 

Here we have a new jar of peaches canned in a honey sauce. Since everyone is yelling about sugar these days and how honey is more natural, I thought I would try a batch or so and see how they turned out. I have yet to taste them but they sure look pretty.

Here we have some canned tomatoes and onions. It is a nice bright red that contrasts well to the previous jars.

 

These are dill pickle slices. I usually do dill refrigerator pickles but we have so many cucumbers this year I had to branch out and can some of them as I ran out of refrigerator space. So picture about 20 jars in my garage refrigerator in addition to all the jars I have in the basement.

 

 

This is peach sauce. It is just like applesauce only you use peaches instead of apples. Can I say Y-U-M in a jar? I have to ration out a large quart jar for dinner so everyone gets a taste. I am sure you could use this in baking also but ours never gets that far. It is a great way to use a lot of peaches at one time which our trees deliver.

This is another one of my pride and joys. This is seedless blackberry jam. I planted some blackberry sticks a few years ago and they have gone wild! They produced a lot of berries this year so with one batch I made this jam.  Isn't the color beautiful?

This last shot is of pickled beets. I know a lot of people do not like beets but I happen to love them, especially pickled. Some years they don't grow well and other years the rabbits eat them so to get enough to can was great. Plus this year we tried beet greens just to eat fresh. They were pretty good and I may do that again next year.

I don't think I could choose which canned product is my favorite. I pretty much love it all or I wouldn't do it.  The next two shots are more an overall view on my basement shelves of the bountiful harvest.  We still have apples to do this year so I will have to squeeze them in somewhere!!!

 

Boy this makes me a bit hungry looking at everything...