My UPS guy called yesterday morning and let me know that a friend of his was moving and had some canning jars they didn’t want to take with them and did I want any. Well, of course I do. So I loaded up some boxes for the loose jars, headed over to the moving house, […]
Fabulous Homemade Canned Salsa
I was going to write something fantabulous about Christmas or winter or something, but to be honest, my brain’s about done, so I’m pulling out the Salsa post I’ve been wanting to write. It’s kind of Christmasy because some people I love are getting some of my salsa as gifts this year. There you go. […]
Canning Tomatoes
Today we have another flashback to summer post. Canning tomatoes. I was going to do salsa, but the first steps of salsa are the same as canning tomatoes, so we really need to cover canning tomatoes first. Canning tomatoes starts with getting some tomatoes. Really not cost effective to buy your tomatoes at a grocery […]
How to Can Peaches
Today we’ll be canning peaches. Yummy. The first thing you need to do is get some peaches. There are lots of different varieties of peaches, but they come in two types: cling and freestone. If you’ve got a choice, you want a freestone variety. They are much easier to work with. The cling peaches are […]
Hot Peppers Part 2: The Saga Continues . . .
Our poor chickens need a house. They had a house that we borrowed from a neighbor, but it was really too small and had no nest boxes and no good access to the interior except through the chicken door which is a bit small and nasty for adults, and although not too small, it’s just […]
Pickled Hot Peppers and my Attempt at Plumbing
Pickled Hot Peppers. Sorry, it doesn’t even sound appetizing to me, but sweet husband likes them on his sandwiches and we had an abundance of hot peppers in the garden this year, so as I’m contemplating what I’m going to do with them, he suggests slicing them and canning them for sandwiches. Sure. Sounds easy […]
Home Canned Cherries
A while back a friend and I picked a boatload of cherries. Okay, about 4 buckets full. They were sweet cherries like Bing (not sure the actual variety, but they were not pie cherries). This cherry source came on kind of unexpectedly, so I had to make some time to take care of all the […]
Juicing Berries and Making Jelly
Today we’re making Mulberry/Currant Jelly. Yummy. If you’ve only had jam and jelly from the store, you’re missing out! Jams and jellies are pretty easy to make and holy cow they’re way better than most of the store stuff. You’d be surprised how little fruit it takes to make a batch of jam, so go […]
Turning Crystallized Freezer Jam into Edible Jam
One of my finds in the freezer over the weekend was a couple of half pints of cherry freezer jam bottled in ’03. I don’t know why for sure, but this jam started crystallizing pretty quick after I made it and it has only gotten worse. These are the last 2 jars of it. We […]
Bottled Butter Part 2
In case any of you missed my first experience bottling butter, check it out before reading the rest of this post. I’ll wait . . . Okay, back now? So the two main problems with bottling butter were 1-not high enough temperature to kill botulism spores, and 2-jar lids did not seal completely even though […]