What have you canned or preserved today?

I did a few pints of curried green tomatoes, spicy garlic green tomatoes, dilly beans, and dill pickles. I think I got a pretty good curry facial from the brine because my nose won't stop running and my eyes wont stop watering!
 
Over the weekend I peeled a ton of tomatoes and bagged them in the fridge to make sauce today. Though I will start that batch shortly here's what excited me most...

When I weighed this last batch I've peeled, it puts me over 100 lbs of tomatoes I have preserved so far! That's right... almost $200 in tomatoes stored away for later, whether as whole tomatoes, salsa, sauces, ect. I did not weigh the tomatoes I gave away, ate fresh, or had bugs getting to them first (then they ended up with the chickens).

Also keep in mind, I'm still going to be collecting tomatoes for a few more weeks! I'm so darn excited! I didn't spend anywhere near $200 on the garden this year.... so it really is an amazing savings.

Just wanted to share... now off to make sauce again!
 
Wow, Vfem, that's great! And that's not counting the rest of your veggies. Can you get a general idea of how much $ your garden will produce this year?

Mary
 
You know, I didn't bother to keep track. I've eaten more fresh then I've canned and I surely haven't stopped myself from stealing fresh yummies all season while out in the yard. I can tell you, the berry picking place up the road charges $6 lb for raspberries, and I know I've used well over 10 lbs of raspberries by now. Mine are double producing, spring and fall and my fall berries have just started their second round!

I have a feeling I have more then $5000 worth of produce savings a year at least when I have years like this one. Not even the cost of the produce alone though, I can and freeze so much I think of what those shelve items I'm saving on too!

Anyways, I have 8 quarts of Tomato Balsamic Sauce going on the stove right now. The house smells amazing, and maybe in another hour I'll get it into jars finally. :D
 
Another 6 dozen ear of corn into the freezer, tonight! I am awfully happy to have this. Many of our local farmers lost their entire corn harvest. My friend has a wonderful organic farm, she lost one field- but this field is producing....Wow, Vfem! You are really cooking!
 
It's fun putting that stuff up. And it will be fun this winter eating it all.

I have trouble remembering all I've done since my last post in this thread. I did the five half-pints of sweet pepper relish in the photo today.

6180_pepper_relish.jpg


In the last few days I filled a quart jar with dried peaches and canned 18 pints of spaghetti sauce. And put another 4 gallons of tomatoes in the freezer, waiting to get enough for another round of canning some type of tomato product.
 
Ridge that looks so yummy!!! I so love peppers... if only I could grow enough to make some of that too. :)

You should really share the recipe... hint, hint!
 
Vfem, I just picked a recipe off the internet.

http://southernfood.about.com/od/picklesrelishes/r/r80810i.htm

A couple of things with this one. I could not find a headspace in it, so I looked at other relish recipes and decided on 1/2".

Also, since it was a half-recipe, the simmering time was a lot less. It took mine about 35 minutes to thicken well. I did stir it a lot. I burned some corn once when I didn't stir it enough so I now overstir everything. I'm not sure this one needed that much stirring, but........

I did half-pints instead of pints but still did the 10 minutes in the hot water bath.

My sweet peppers have done really well this year. Most of the ones I used in this were yellow or orange, with a few reds. No green ones.

I did peel them. That took a lot of time, but these are mainly for Christmas baskets so I went the extra step. If you use a food processor for the chopping especially, I don't think peeling them is anywhere close to necessary. I certainly will NOT peel the next batch I do.
 
Ridgerunner, I have been curious. When you put tomatoes in the freezer, do you do anything to them? Just pop them in a freezer bag? When you get them out of the freezer, do you have to thaw first? Are they mushy when you thaw? Then what steps comes next for canning?

I have been wanting to do this since my harvest is alittle at a time due to my few plants. The only canning I will be doing is salsa. Not enough tomatoes for anything else, since I give some away to some very deserving people.

Mary
 
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