Saturday, July 16, 2011

Canning fun!

My husband is a funny guy. He told me recently that he finally figured out why I love to can. He says that it's a healthy and productive way for me to satisfy my obsessive compulsive tendency to organize!

At first, I was a little confused- then he elaborated. He told me that with canning, I get to take all of the unorganized fruits and veggies on my counter, then organize them into jars, process them, and have a full pantry of healthy, delicious food for when we can't get them fresh.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized he was right, in a sense. I do get satisfaction from naturally preserving fresh, in season, local, organic produce for my family to use when we would otherwise have to get it in a can or import it from Mexico. (gag!) I like seeing the rows of delicious pickles, to die for jams, fresh fruit just waiting to be put into a pie, fresh veggies just waiting to be the centerpiece of a meal- and more than that, I like knowing that I am honing a really cool skill! I am so thankful that I took an interest in preserving food. SO thankful that I enjoy it!

And yes, I like to organize.

Here are some pictures of the veggies and fruits that have been put in their place today!
 ;)
(Love you, Tim!)

On the left: new red taters
On the right: summer squash medley


After I finished the potato canning and squash canning, I did some more peaches!

With the pressure canner, I'm trying out smaller than usual batches of each new thing (beans/squash/taters/etc.) just to see how it turns out. Hence, the two jars of everything new!


The yummy sweet corn!
And holy cow- it takes 6 large ears to make 1 quart!
Will have to put them in pints from now on- we can't eat that much corn in a sitting,
no way no how!


More beautiful green beans!


When Tim gets home from doing stuff with his motorcycle (yes, he got one for Father's Day / his 29th birthday next month!), he gets to carry all of THIS down to the basement!

3 comments:

mjm said...

what is in your summer squash medley? We have tons of zucchini and summer squash. How did you can it?
Thanks!

Dusti said...

That's exactly what's in it! Plus a couple of random squash that a friend brought me that I never learned the name of.

I just washed, cut, and boiled it for a couple of minutes. Put the hot squash into hot quart jars, put a teaspoon of canning salt in there, covered it with some of the boiling water that I did the squash in leaving an inch of headspace between the water and the top of the jar.

I put on a lid and ring, made sure it was tight- popped the jars into my pressure canner and processed my quarts for 40 minutes at 10 pounds of pressure!

easy peasy! :)

Nicki said...

Oh, this looks like fun! I've been curious how to can..not tried it yet. Thank you for posting. Stopping by from the hop...glad I did! http://littleislandstudios.blogspot.com/ Have a great weekend!