This post is LONG overdue but I needed to get it on here....
I canned like a crazy woman this year. Something about free food...at the hottest point of the summer I thought it would be fantastic to can a bunch of apricot jam and apricot puree because my friend Rachel scored me a 5 gallon bucket of FREE apricots. I had never canned apricots before and I quickly enlisted the kids at the kitchen sink. They removed all of the pits and helped me quite a bit! They even thought it was fun! I heated up my already scorchingly hot kitchen (no A/C in this rental house) and by the end of the evening thought I was going to DIE of heat exhaustion....BUT we ended up with DELICIOUS apricot jam (14 pints) and apricot puree (10 pints) to be used in smoothies, sauces and as baby food.
One of my goals with this baby is to buy very minimal store-bought baby food. Not only is it healthier but a lot more cost effective.
I also canned strawberry jam for the first time. I was not planning on this undertaking but when I stopped by the farmer's market one day these beauties cried out to me and I could not resist! 1 flat gave me 12 pints of beautiful jam and I used a reduced sugar recipe which tastes like the fresh berries. I like this jam but for the sake of money and time IF I do jam again I will do freezer jam.
Earlier I canned 12 pints of cherries picked from Chris' parents cherry tree. I plan on using these in desserts and also in oatmeal this winter. Next year I'd like to try canning cherry pie filling and drying some...
I learned that I WILL NOT can tomato sauce (spaghetti sauce) ever again! This is VERY VERY time consuming and I like Prego just fine...I ended up with 18 quarts and unless the tomatoes are from your garden this is not saving you any money either. I have also decided that MY TIME IS WORTH MONEY!!! I would rather spend some few extra cents at the store than 2 DAYS making sauce!!! AND, my hubby and kids were not huge fans...we like Prego around here.
In the future, I'll stick with canning diced or whole tomatoes, tomato juice and salsa.
Peaches and pears are an every year staple for our family and I will can them every year no matter what, even if I don't do any other canning. I love home-canned peaches and pears so much! The taste just doesn't compare and I use a very light syrup so I feel like they are healthy too. Next year I am going to try either sugar-free apple or white grape juice though.
I canned 36 quarts of peaches and 43 quarts of pears!!! (thanks mom and dad Graf for FREE pears!!!) I had already bought and canned 20 quarts of pears earlier in the month but when we went down for General Conference to the Grafs we loaded up on more...enough for 23 more quarts!!! And that was just from the pears that had dropped on the ground that my kids collected! I will have plenty of pears for the year, for the baby, for smoothies and for giving!!!
AREN'T THEY BEAUTIFUL?????!!!!!!
I also got FREE plums from mom and dad Graf and these made beautiful plum puree. I made about 12 pints of pureed plums which I'll use for baby food, as a substitute in baking (for oil) and also for fruit leather.
Because we moved so late in the planting season the only thing I planted were some tomatoes and a garden full of beans! We had a great crop, although we would have had twice as much if I was able to plant them at the first of spring. I canned about 12 quarts of beans I think and thought that they would be awesome to have since olivia ONLY eats green beans for a vegetable (yeah, I know, we REALLY need to work on that). However, after HOURS upon HOURS of toiling in the garden all summer and then the actual labor of picking and canning the beans...alas, my lovely 3 year old has procalimed that she doesn't like "fuzzy beans" from the garden and refuses to eat them. She, like her daddy, only likes green beans from a can! What in the world did I get myself into?!?!
I just finished up my canning by doing 24 quarts of plain appleasuce canned and 24 quarts of cinnamon spiced applesauce for the freezer. Again, thanks to mom and dad Graf for the wonderful fruit! We have already enjoyed several jars of applesauce and I am just hoping that we have enough to get through the year! Applesauce is very labor intensive. I literally spent 2 whole days making applesauce and that was with my mom's help too!!!
Here's the kids helping puree the apples through the mill:
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