What have you canned in '09?

I know that I'm not the only one into canning around here, so I thought I would start a thread to see who's been canning what, maybe discover a new recipe or two along the way.

Here is what I've done so far:

13 half pints of Apricot Pineapple Jam
11 half pints of Cinnamon Apple Jelly
14 half pints of Ginger Peach Jam
12 half pints of Spiced Peach Jam
7 pints of Lemon Cucumber Pickles

Anxious to make some salsa, but the tomatoes are very slow to ripen. The kids also want more of the Cinnamon Applesauce we made last year, but the local apples usually aren't ready until September. The thing I made last year, that was popular with everyone I sent it to, was the Carrot Cake Jam, so I guess I'll be making a batch of that too.

So what have you guys put up this year, and what is on your must have list? David, Dafy, I know you guys must have canned something by now!

Bonnie

Apricot/ginger jam - I didn't follow a recipe, just pitted and cooked the apricots, ran them through a food mill, added a bit of really good quality powdered ginger, and just enough sugar to take the edge off. There was so much pectin in the fruit I could stand a fork up.

Yesterday was the first 8 quarts of dill/tarragon/organic unfiltered, un-pasturized cider cucumber pickles. This will never win a beauty prize, but, boy, are they good. The raw vinegar makes the jars all cloudy - but the flavor is extraordinary.

Next will be pickled French Fillet beans - really slender, 1/4 inch dia beans with lots of tarragon.

I'd say the onslaught starts here pretty quick. I've got 2 trees worth of peaches that are a couple days off - then the plums, and apples are really coming close. Seems early, but then the birds will hammer them if I try to leave them fully ripen on the trees. Tomatoes, peppers, onions, and all are now coming in.

It's always fun to see my electricity bill for September - big spike, what with the dehydrator running pretty much non-stop for the month, all the electric elements for canning and prepping...

I've canned 40 pints of cherry sauce for pancakes, waffles, ice cream and yogurt, etc. from farmer's market bing cherries. Also canned 30 pints of peach sauce (like apple sauce except with peaches). My daughter eats it right out of the jar. I also just finished canning 23 pints of peach jam. The peaches were also from the farmer's market. I'll be canning bread and butter pickles next week. I'll also be picking some blackberries down at a Penrose farm and making jam as well...

David, I'm not near experienced enough, and I've spent enough time over on the Harvest forum, that I'm way to paranoid to try to can without and "approved" recipe, but I admire your expertise. The Ginger Peach Jam recipe I used, called for finely diced candied (crystallized) ginger, which I just happened to have on hand.

Karen, that peach sauce sounds pretty interesting! Do you just follow a regular apple sauce canning recipe, and sub the peaches for the apples? I wonder if I could use peaches that have been frozen? I bought a case of peaches last weekend at the farmer's market, and still had a few left over after all of that jam making, so I stuck them in the freezer.

Bonnie

Hi Bonnie,
In regards to the peach sauce, I didn't use a recipe...my kids also can't wait till apple time when I make more apple sauce so I decided to make them a little "peach sauce" as a side dish one night instead and see how they liked it. Both my kids love it! I only add enough sugar to take any real sourness off and add some lemon to help retain color. I started canning some this year and it's been a hit. As I said in the original post, my daughter (17 years old now) eats it straight out of the jar. We also use it as a base for smoothies...and considering using it as a substitute for vegetable oil in baking muffins or tea bread...
I don't see why you couldn't use frozen peaches to make some...just make enough to try...let me know how you like it : )...
Karen

The family picked strawberries at a patch...challenging with a 21 month old more interested in jumping on the plants and very few ripe fruits. Somehow we ended up with a bit over 8 pounds.

My goal was to make Christine Ferber's Strawberry Raspberry Balsamic Vinegar jam. Not sure if I followed the correct recipe, as I used one I found on the internet, but now I have a bunch of expensive syrup; since jam didn't set. I even poured it all back into the kettle, reheated and added pectin. Still syrup...

And the family hates the flavor - even on ice cream...never thought my kids would ever turn their noses to ice cream - UGH.

But, the color is amazing.

As I heated water, on multiple burners, for almost an entire day, I wondered how the canning process becomes cost effective. Thankfully, for the utility bill, I had turned off the air conditioning.

Soon, I'll can crushed tomatoes and salsa.

I forgot, we made 6 quarts of plum syrup as well. Over the years, the most reliable fruit at least we'll get some seems to be plums - so we make plum jam, I attempt to make plum jelly, and when that fails, we got plum syrup. This year, we cut to the chase and just made the syrup - :-).

Bonnie, far be it from lil' ol' me to question the denizens of the Harvest Forum, although you might have picked up from my infrequent posts over there that I do think they occasionally err/stray over into the ridiculously over-cautious - as in advising someone who used a large onion instead of a medium onion in a salsa recipe, they should slap on a hazmat suit, triple bag the jars of salsa, and drive carefully to the dump to throw them out - :-)

In practice, in any of the recipes for jams and jellies and general fruit concoctions, you can substitute the fruit w/o any risk - just like Karen does making 'peach sauce' - and if you wish to be super-safe, add a bit of lemon juice or something.

And for pickles, the tried and true, Harvest Forum Approved method of mixing up a 50:50 solution of vinegar and water will work for pickling just about any vegetable safely. For my tarragon green bean pickles, I'm going to pick several sprigs of tarragon and a dill head, rinse those off and stuff them in the bottom of a quart jar, add some pepper corns and a teaspoon of salt, then pack the jar with rinsed green beans straight from the garden, fill the jar with the solution, and water bath it for 15 minutes. Which is the same thing I do for cucumbers, except I add more dill.

Dear Austinhanasmom,
I'm so sorry to read about your vinegar jam experience. I've certainly had days like that myself and I can't even figure out how to suggest making lemonade out of your lemons for this one.
However, I did want to add that once you have cooked down the sugars in anything you're canning, trying to reheat the concoction and adding pectin (or more pectin) just won't work. When the concoction is heated, the sugar molecules begin separating. As the sugar breaks down in the heating process, the pectin bonds to those sugar molecules as it cools down to create your set jam. Once you've passed this critical point, you can't set it with pectin or anything else. I hope that makes sense...: )
Karen

Well, I have been advised to throw out the pickles I made yesterday. I broke the 50/50 rule.

Currently, the jars are sitting in the refrigerator, while I decide what to do ...

Here is a link that might be useful: Harvest forum thread

You can borrow my hazmat suit. :-).

I couldn't tell - did you process/water bath can them yet? It seemed to me that they had plenty of vinegar, but what do I know? I make stuff like sauerkraut, fermented green chili, and all these good things anyway. I'm sure they'll keep in the fridge just fine, and your odds on getting botulism, if you can them, are about 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000.

Yes, they were processed in a BWB for 20 min.

Karen - totally makes sense!! I always appreciate the food science. THANKS:))

In the future, I'll only try jam recipes that include pectin from the start.

WHAT a waste of a weekend...but a lesson was learned.

I hear ya on that waste of time, but lesson learned thing!!!

The whole Lemon Cucumber Pickle saga was pretty frustrating. The jars are in the 'fridge, and we ate two whole pints today. Whatever we don't finish tomorrow, I'll throw out just to be safe. I'll let you know if any of us develop botulism ...

Bonnie, (and all)
I personally think your Lemon Cuke pickles will be just fine. You will know when you open a new jar if they have gone bad. Trust me...

Also, I think prolly the most important thing to remember about canning all veggies is to use the correct method and processing time for the altitude where you live. Silt is at 5438 feet, just a tad higher than Denver, so a pressure canner MIGHT be a better choice if you are going to do a lot of canning. Less apt to over cook the food.

Here's a list of CSU publications; scroll down to Food Preservation and choose your topic. Most are downloadable in PDF format.

Here is a link that might be useful: CSU Extension

I've never considered learning a lesson a waste of time, particularly if you can share those lessons learned on forums such as these! I think these sorts of lessons we might have learned from parents or grandparents if we still lived in an era where we worked on the farm or in the kitchen with older relatives. Unfortunately, our society, for the most part, doesn't work that way anymore. So forums such as these are fabulous for reconnecting with that canning experience. Bravo to us for venturing into this and finding each other to learn from and thank you for being willing to share your frustrations, Bonnie! I just wish my kids were more interested than they are in learning what I've learned while canning. They just hit the road when the kitchen gets too hot (all puns intended) but come back when the final product is ready to consume : )

Hi Irisgirl, good to hear from you again! The fact that botulism is colorless and odorless, is what makes me nervous, but I agree I think the pickles are safe ... for a few days in the fridge anyway. I do use a pressure canner, but follow the instructions for a BWB for jams, pickles, and salsa. The only difference is you don't put the weights on the lid, and I add the extra 10 minutes to the processing time, as the canning book instructs you to do.

Karen, I agree, these forums are such a great resource. I have no relatives close by, and would have never had enough nerve to try canning without the encouragement and advice from the folks on the Harvest forum (even if they are very conservative in their views). Being able to read others experiences has helped me avoid a lot of newbie mistakes ... not all of them obviously, LOL.

Before picture:

The infamous 'Lemon Cucumber Pickles':

It was my oldest son that talked me into learning to make pickles, but he was out enjoying his last days of summer while these were being made.

Bonnie

Oh, don't throw that out. They look wonderful.

I'm in the middle of making my French Fillet Tarragon / dill beans - I hit it perfectly and was able to pull out the whole row of bean plants and get a 3 gallon bucket of green beans, none of them bigger in diameter than a Bic pen. This is a whole, whole lot easier then crawling on my hands and knees trying to keep the plant alive after the picking.

Washed 'em, picked off the stems and flowers, and I'm now letting them dry a bit. Have a dozen qt jars each with a seed head of dill, 4 or 5 sprigs of tarragon, and now I'll add salt and a bit of sugar, stuff the jars, and process.

The other day, I used the search engine on the Harvest forum, and there were something ridiculous like 180 threads on botulism. Given that the incidence from home-canned vegetables is less than what, 20 jars a year, and the millions and millions of jars of stuff being canned every year, and probably 99.99% by people who never heard of the Harvest Forum, is something to keep in mind.

And they always fail to tell you just what they did that caused the botulism, like canning green beans in some old plastic mayonnaise jar, filling it up with hot water or something, skipping the processing part.

Honest - if you have a funky jar of something, you'll know it.

I should add that the Harvest Forum is a wonderful source of recipes, ideas, and information on what works and tastes good, and what doesn't. Plus, as always, fun and entertaining people to meet.

What a beautiful looking batch of pickles!...eye candy...Don't throw them out. I would think a big neighborhood pot luck party would wipe those out really fast... then, if there was a problem of botulism no one would know who's food caused the problem LOL...no, really, they look beautiful and are probably just fine for awhile in the fridge. Jam that doesn't seal is fine in the refrigerator for at least three weeks (recommended time on the pectin box) before you're supposed to start worrying. I would think anything with vinegar AND lemon (which we all know is also an acid) would last even longer than jam that only has a tiny bit of lemon per batch. I hope your son enjoys them ; )...
Karen

I have an apple tree with red fleshed fruit. Unfortunately, the copper tag that had the name of the variety disappeared, and I'm still researching to find out what it is.

Anywho, the apples are ripe, tangy, great flavor. So we made apple sauce with a bucket of them, and dried that in the dehydrator. Then made another bucket of apple sauce, and dissolved the fruit leather in that, added three tablespoons, one each of three different kinds of Penzey's cinnamon, and made 10 pints of apple butter. No sugar, just an intense apple taste.

DD11 helped. DD11 licked the spoons, pots, and so on and is now rather full and went to take a nap.

Congratulations on your apple harvest! I am confused as to why you dehydrated the apple sauce? I'm not a fan of fruit butters, it's a texture thing, but I can't wait to make some applesauce. I like it on the chunky side, with a handful of Redhots thrown in to make it a nice rose color.

I've got 4 pints of Dill Sandwich Slices in the canner right now. This is the recipe I made last year, so at least I know I'm doing it right this time! I didn't have enough National Pickling and County Fair cukes to make a whole batch, so I used a Poona Kheera, and a couple of Chinese Yellows. I used the Chinese Yellows when I made the Lemon Cucumber Pickles this past week, and they tasted fine, but when I took a bite of the couple left over slices today, they were bitter. Is pickling them going to make that worse or better? Guess next time, I should taste them before I put them in the jars, huh?

Bonnie

Bonnie, the 'traditional' way of making apple butter was to put seeded apples in some huge copper pot that hung over the fire place for a few weeks or something, simmering away, turning it to mush, and removing a lot of the moisture. The end result is a really thick sauce - say triple thick apple sauce. By dehydrating half the apple sauce to begin with, it just saves a lot of simmering. My great grandmother used to make it with some enormous stock pot on the back of her stove, and it took at least a week. Some folks now make apple butter in a crock pot and add sugar. This just tastes a whole lot better.

We're having a huge fruit year, the best we've ever had. I'll have several bushels of apples still to come. Now we're working on peaches. Small peaches. Lots of them.

Ah, bitter cucumbers. Cut the ends off before you eat them. In a lot of varieties, and depending on some other factors like when you picked them, the flower end has some weird enzyme that makes it bitter. But then, I can never remember with 100% certainty that its the flower end, .... or the stem end?...., so I just cut both ends off. :-)

David, have you ever made peach butter? Same kind of idea as apple butter but only with peaches...found the recipe a few years ago in one of my canning cookbooks. The process for cooking the peach butter down in my recipe requires that you spread the mixture over jelly roll pans and cook it all down in a 250 degree oven for several hours, stirring every once in awhile. I haven't bought a dehydrator yet but am considering it for preserving apples this Fall. You may have just given me another reason to buy one... I haven't made my peach butter in a couple of years since the process was so time consuming and, not to mention the uncomfortably warm kitchen factor...thanks for the post...

Kareng, this peach butter concept is in the works - a first time to try it. I have a bushel of small peaches that are just now ripening up. I did a trial run yesterday - pitted, cooked, ran the peaches through a food mill. The result is way too watery for the standard dehydrator trays. They're way too small to pit without going crazy, so I need to cook them first and then squeeze the pits out. I will try to chop them up in a food processor instead of a food mill, might work. Or, actually, the oven with a low temp and shallow dish might work just fine, or I can use shallow dishes in the dehydrator.

Will keep you'll posted.....

Update - another 3 gallons of gallons of peaches washed, de-stemmed, and cooked down to two-something gallons, meaning they got soft, and waiting to cool so I can pop out the pits. I dehydrated the first batch into fruit leather, and it tastes pretty darn peachy, but there is this, I dunno, bitter, peach-pit-kinda taste in there that needs dealing with. Something like vanilla might knock it out of there.

Back to work......

Well, I didn't do any canning today, but I did freeze 20 cups of grated zucchini (in 2 cup portions perfect for breadmaking), and 2 quarts of green beans. All of this was courtesy of fellow gardeners at the community garden. I think everyone feels a bit sorry for me, since I got such a late start on my plot, so everyone keeps offering up their extras.

I'm extra super busy with work and not having much time to play lately. I have a new nephew who was born at the beginning of August and have another nephew due early October.

Bonnie, keep the pickles in the fridge and they should be fine :-) If they feel slimy then toss them, but I wouldn't worry. Bitter cukes will probably not improve with pickling, they would still be bitter. Sorry!

David & Karen, Let me know how the slow oven cooking method works out because I've been thinking about trying it too.

David, try almond extract with the peach leather - they go fantastic together!

Austinhanasmom, Christine Ferber's jams can take a lot longer to set than traditional pectin-added jams, sometimes at least 4-6 weeks before you get a set. Don't give up! If it still doesn't set you can always use it as a glaze on pork roast or chicken.

About a month ago, Sunflowers had apricots and peaches on sale for $0.67/lb. I made 4 pints of apricot jam and a dozen 1/2-pints, two 4-oz jars and a pint of peach jam for cold mornings. I have berries in a neighbor's freezer for later jamming. I have tons of recipes I want to try but have a hard time convincing the rest of the household to try the "weird stuff". I'm planning a trip out to Miller Farms in sept/oct so will hopefully be canning more then.

Happy canning!

Jen

Just canned 17 pints of strawberry jam yesterday. My daughter used the little extra to make homemade pop tarts and had the rest of the little bit on buttermilk biscuits last night. Fabulous flavor...Costco had a real good price on strawberries when we went Monday. Also considering making orange marmalade...never made it before...any hints or thoughts on that? Also wondering if Meyer lemons would make a good marmalade...saw a good price on those at Whole Foods...still getting up energy to do my bread and butter pickles. They take so much work. Jams and sauces are so easy I've gotten spoiled.
Dafygardennut, the slow cook oven method for butters works well it's just time consuming, heats up the kitchen, and requires that you're home multiple hours to babysit the mixture. I'm a taxi mom beginning around 3:00 most days so I really need to start early to make the mixture and then can it all...I don't have the space to store a big batch of peach butter to can another day...

Just pulled the last 3 of 12 pints of peach butter out of the canner, and they are cooling, and the swamp cooler is on because its a freakin' 92�F here.

I made peach fruit leather from slightly over 2 gallons of peach pur�e, and I added that to a gallon 1/2 of other peach pur�e, heated that up, let it sit over night for the leather to soften up, stirred it all up this morning, and canned it. Rather thick it is.

Peachy it is, also. I can't describe the color, sort of grey, isn't very attractive. Tastes great, and the kids like it, so we'll see how it mellows out.

These were from 'cling' white peaches that really weren't all that flavorful. I still have a tree of bright orange free stones that should be ripe in a few weeks. Those will be dried, maybe a chutney.

I asked over on the harvest forum about pickling onions, and was told I needed hunert' percent vinegar. Which would make them inedible and peel the enamel off my teeth. Oh well.......

David, if you really want to pickle those onions, you had better keep that hazmat suit :-) - I am envisioning the noxious fumes I had when I pickled garlic.

There are two recipes in the new Ball book, Onion pickles which is pearl onions, canning salt, sugar, mustard seed, horseradish, vinegar, hot peppers and bay leaves - this would be more of a spicy bread & butter type pickle; or there is Vinegared Red Onions which just has red onions, garlic and red wine vinegar. The onion pickles has the option ro make them "Sour Onion Pickles" by omitting the sugar and bay leaf.

In any of the pickles you can add or remove as much sugar as you like to counter the vinegar, but you really do need to use all vinegar in this case because of the low acidity in the onions (they have a lot of water); but you can use any vinegar you like as long as the vinegar is 5%. I think the red wine vinegar would be much mellower than straight up white vinegar.

Jen

I'll probably pass on pickling these green onions, its probably one of these things that the taste I have in mind isn't what I'd end up with - I'm after that taste you get with a finely shredded fresh onion thats left to marinate in vinegar and spices, and then you eat it along side a curry, or on a hot dog, or something like that. I should just make a whole bunch of that and keep it in the fridge.

More like a 5-minute pickle then.

In an attempt to control the fruit fly population in my kitchen (yuck), I canned salsa and hot sauce yesterday.

I used too many cherry tomatoes in the salsa and the lemon flavor was overwhelming. Thankfully, I did not waste another Saturday canning, as I figured out that if I add a hot pepper or two to the opened jar, flavor is better balanced - YEAH!!

The hot sauce recipe, no tomatoes, was not necessarily supposed to be canned, but the pH was 4, and the temp was 190 degrees, so I processed away. This sauce is not one that I would slather onto a taco, but it should be good for cooking. In search of a tomato based taco sauce I think...

Since I have 60 tomato plants, I know my recipe search will soon yield FANTASTIC canning results...what a journey!!

I must admit, I am a bit burned out on the whole tomato gardening. I toiled for MONTHS, eight in fact, and now that the fruits are ripe, I've lost interest. What's up with that??

"MFS", austinnhanasmom. 'Mater Fatigue Syndrome. The disease progresses from your current burn-out, to throwing them against the fence, and the final stage of the disease is putting grocery sacks full of tomatoes in the UPS guy's van, when he isn't looking.

There is some discussion in the medical literature over the best cure, with results varying widely.

A BLT will often to it, if its good bacon. Or, and this is my favorite, a huge bowl of chunked up tomato, basil, salt, shredded onion, and diced pepper, sprinkled with loads of parmesan, and snorked down with crispy Italian Bread. Snaps me right out of it.....

I'm looking at several bushels of green tomatoes on the vine right now, so I feel your pain.

Yippee! Spotted my first half ripe cherry tomato on one of my 38 plants today. Hopefully, I too, will be in the same boat as you all...
By the way, a friend told me a great trick for getting rid of fruit flies...quickly...Put a quarter inch of red cider vinegar in the bottom of a quart sized canning jar (hopefully you have one or two left after all your canning). Anyway, you then get a piece of 81/2 x 11 paper (preferably scrap so you're not wasting a clean piece on the @#$%ing things. Twist the paper into a cone shape where there's a pretty small hole at the point end (small enough for the flies to go only one way...in) and tape it into that cone shape. Stick the cone small end down into the quart jar until the paper fits snug inside the jar. The flies are attracted to the vinegar, go down the funnel and are too stupid to figure out how to get back out. Works REALLY well! It's also really cool watching the stupid things trying to get out. I rid my kitchen of ALL the fruit flies in two days that came home with the farmer's market peaches. I have also placed it right next to my compost on the kitchen counter and I no longer have ANY fruit flies around my compost bin when I open it up to put food scraps in.

David and Karen - THANKS!!

I picked a bunch of paste tomatoes today to make tomato based taco sauce.

I will prevail with the tomatoes and will definitely build the fruit fly trap when my 4yo is up tomorrow. He LOVES stuff like that.

I have a wine glass, a bit of red wine, with saran wrap (holes in it) covering it but I doubt I've caught any fruit flies. Seems I catch more in the glass of wine I'm drinking...

Happy Gardening -

I do a lot of jams, jellies and butters along with some fruit and some pickles. Don't can like I used to with just the two of us.

Raspberry Jam
Strawberry jam
Strawberry Rhubarb Jam
Nanking Cherry Jelly
Nanking Cherry Jam
Pie Cherry Jam
Jalapeno Jelly
Peach Jam
Plum Jam
Huckleberry Jam
Serviceberry Jelly
Chokecherry Jelly
Elderberry Jelly
Apple Jelly
Apple Pie Jam
Apple Butter - made in the oven in largest roaster for about 3-4 hours cooking down in the winter. I first make and can applesauce.
Pear Butter - done same way
Orange Marmalade - a lot of work but husband's favorite
Canned zuchinni bread and butter pickles, Bing cherries and pickled beets so far. Will do pears and peaches later and dill pickles and probably sweet pickle relish.
Bonnie I would like to try the Carrot Cake Jam recipe.

WOW margaretmontana - toast must be amazing at your table!!

I canned some AMAZING Five Pepper Ketchup today, found the recipe here, - can't wait to have tacos now!! My fingers are burning from the spices but what a flavor!! No more store bought hot sauce for me.

Well, I finally had enough ripe tomatoes, peppers, and onions to make a batch of salsa!

Before:

After:

Okay, I found this odd, but the Pizza and Senorita peppers which are supposed to be mild jalapeno types, had no heat at all, and the little Mini-Belles that were grown in the Earthbox surrounded by only sweet peppers had a bit of a kick to them. Not sure if the finished product will be mild or medium now, since I didn't really have any leftover after filling my jars to get a good taste of it.

Margaret, the recipe is called Carrot Cake Jam, and it's from the Ball Complete Book on Home Preserving. I have to run pick up kids from school, but I'll try to post it when I get back.

Bonnie

Okay, here it is Margaret!

CARROT CAKE JAM

1 1/2 cups finely grated, peeled carrots
1 1/2 cups chopped, cored and peeled pears
1 3/4 canned crushed pineapple, including juice
3 Tbsp lemon juice
1 tspn cinnamon
1/2 tspn nutmeg
1/2 tspn cloves
1 package (1.75 oz) powdered fruit pectin
6 1/2 cups granulated sugar

Prepare canner, jars, and lids.

In a large, stainless steel saucepan, combine carrots, pears, pineapple with juice, lemon juice, cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves. Bring to a boil over high heat, stirring frequently. Reduce heat, cover and boil gently for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat and whisk in pectin until dissolved. Bring to a boil over high heat, stirring frequently. Add sugar all at once and return to a full rolling boil, stirring constantly, for one minute. Remove from heat and skim off foam.

Ladle hot jam into hot jars, leaving 1/4" headspace. BWB process for 10 minutes.

(I have to add 10 minutes to the process time for my altitude)

Oh, and the recipe says it makes about 6 half pint jars, but I had enough for 7.

Enjoy!

Bonnie

Bonnie -

what size can for the pineapple?

Thanks

Sorry about that, Deb! I was typing in a hurry. That should read 1 3/4 cups.

mmmmmmm....that carrot cake jam recipe sounds fabulous. thanks for asking for it, Deb and thanks, highalttransplant for taking the time to post it for the rest of us. YUM!
Spent the last two days making four citrus marmalade. It's absolutely elegant...we had some last night over vanilla ice cream. Wow. Very decadent. BTW, found the recipe in the Joy Of Cooking. There's also a recipe on that page for ginger marmalade. May have to try that too...I'll let you all know how it turns out if I do.

Made 5 pints of Bread and Butter Pickles today, and I think that they are the best pickles I've made so far, not too sweet and not too sour. I didn't have enough brine for a 6th jar, but me and the kids were dipping the leftover cucumber slices in the extra brine ... mmmmm, yum!!!

Karen, I used candied ginger in my Ginger Peach Jam, and even though I diced it very fine, I didn't care for the pieces of ginger in there. I think next time I'll grate it with a microplaner, or just use the powdered ginger.

Bonnie

Good to know, Bonnie. Thanks. I'll be sure to make a note on the recipe.

I'm about ready for the annual spice order from Penzeys, and thought I'd mention, since this thread is now talkin' about ginger, that this spice outfit has, far and away, the best powdered ginger I've ever run across. 4 oz lasts us a year.

Their assortment of cinnamons are also remarkably better, and we order a bit of each kind.

We keep all this in the freezer and it doesn't lose any flavor or freshness.

Here is a link that might be useful: awesome ginger

Thanks for the link, David! I recently ordered some Spanish paprika, and one of those microplanes from a place called The Spice House. There prices seem comparable to Penzeys, and they have a lot of good recipes on their website.

Do you keep all of your spices in the freezer? Mine are in a cabinet next to the stove. I'm sure the heat coming off of it isn't exactly prolonging the shelf life of my spices!

Here is a link that might be useful: The Spice House

Bonnie, of the stuff we use, some of the prices are significantly better at the Spice House, and some at Penzeys. We also use a lot of their spice blends, because, at the end of it, they do a better job than we can. That Spice House sweet Hungarian Paprika looks awfully good, and we go through 3 lbs during canning.

This came just in time, because we order a lot of stuff for canning season.

I actually do keep most of our spices in the freezer. I dunno, once you've tasted fresh spices vs regular, over-the-stove spices, there is no turning back. So it makes for a pretty funny cupboard situation - nothing in the spice cupboards except salt, whole nutmegs, a pepper grinder, extracts, and some dried, whole chilis, and then open up the freezer and its got dozens of bags of this and that......

Okay, now you've got me curious! What recipes are you canning that use the sweet Hungarian Paprika? This is my third year of trying to make my own homemade paprika. The Alma's are just starting to turn, so it shouldn't be long now. The dish I make most often with it is Chicken Paprikash.

Here's another interesting freezer preservation method but for fresh herbs...I have a lot of fresh herbs in the greenhouse and was looking for a way, other than drying them upside down and then finding cobwebs on them a week later which are impossible to get all off. A girlfriend suggested putting the fresh herbs in ice cube trays with a tbsp. water in each little section. When you need, say, basil for a pasta sauce recipe, you toss some basil ice cubes in your sauce. You could also defrost your cubes, drain the rest of the water in between paper towels and then run the herbs through the food processor.

We're making pesto with the nuts, basil, and oil and freezing that in flattened out zip locks - add the cheese and garlic later. My DD would subsist entirely on pesto if given half a chance.

re paprika, this Hungarian Sweet paprika adds a big punch of flavor - another eye opener re spice quality. With canning, we use most of it in our 'tomato based sauce' which is tomatoes, garlic, green and red pepper, onion - all from the garden - add some tomato paste and paprika to thicken it up. We don't spice until we open it up, so it gets used for anything from pizza sauce to pasta sauce to stews to chili con carne, as well as soup.

Other than that, we also do a chicken dish, and use it most often in Mac and Cheese - it does pick that up considerably. Also in bbq rubs, sauces, and one cheese dip - mix grated cheddar cheese and paprika and diced green roasted chili with sour cream, let it sit overnight to think about it, and then serve with chips. Good, but, well, has a few calories.

Don't forget about our colorado spice shop. They have two locations that I know of and have a website you can order from. Their smoked paprika is amazing and they have pesto cheese sprinkles that I love on popcorn.

Here is a link that might be useful: Savory Spice Shop

All these new spice shops. I'm going to have to impose self-control. Balanced by the near certain possibility I'll find something really, really good.

Today, I had the HUGEST kettle of crushed tomatoes ever and it yielded only 13.5 quarts...what is up with that??

Good thing is I am running out of jars - YEAH!!

Up next is the Carrot Cake Jam...

Well I just got started on canning this year. The pic is my runs with my new canner. I did 2 quarts of colored water to check for siphoning. And I got 10 lovely quarts of beef stock.
Until I can figure out how to make a picture appear in the body of the message you can click on the link to see the pic if you want to.

Here is a link that might be useful: A pic of my Canning results.

Well, no canning today, but I did make another double batch of pesto, and still have enough pinenuts for a couple more batches. Thanks again, Deb!!! This batch wasn't as spicy as the last one, but I added a handful of parsley to it. I would've added more, but that was all that the grasshoppers left me!

The two younger kids were scarfing it up on crackers as fast as I could spoon it into freezer bags. I managed to get 4 1/2 cups put in the deep freezer. It made me think of your daughter, David. I was surprised that it wasn't too spicy for the 3 yr. old. By the time they were done, both of them had runny noses, LOL!

I picked a huge bowl of tomatoes this evening to make another batch of salsa tomorrow. I was afraid to wait until morning to pick them, because the garden was raided by some four legged animal last night. Two of my biggest, ripest tomatoes laid half eaten on the ground this morning. Grrrrrrr ...

Bonnie

Canned another 7 pints of Annie's Salsa. There was about 1/2 a jar left over, and the kids and I finished that off in about 5 minutes after school this afternoon.

Still a bit disappointed in the lack of heat from Pizza and Senorita. I even tried not removing the membranes, and still nothing. I thought maybe the one that was almost red would have a little kick, but it was like eating a bell pepper. Speaking of bell peppers, check out the Revolution (top, left) in this picture. The picture doesn't do it justice. It was bigger than the ones at the grocery store. I got 1 1/2 cups chopped from just that one pepper!

Those two little red Mini Belles have some heat, but not enough to have any effect on a whole batch of salsa. What I'm trying to achieve is a salsa that hits somewhere between mild and medium. Anyone have a pepper suggestion for me?

Bonnie

Bonnie - I made the Carrot Cake Jam tonight. I used 1/4 tsp on cloves and toasted the pecans and added them just before putting in the jars. I think this would be really good on ice cream as a topping - makes me thing of pineapple topping with nuts in it. Would also be good on pound cake with whipped cream. Got a blue ribbon at the fair for my zuchinni bread and butter pickles. Entered mostly vegetables and got some ribbons on them also.

Margaret, I hate to point this out, but there are no pecans listed in the recipe. Although there usually is in a real carrot cake recipe, so I guess they would go well in it, though I guess technically that would make it a conserve instead of a jam. Anywho, glad you liked it.

I've never tasted zucchini pickles before, do they taste much different than ones made with cucumbers?

Bonnie

Bonnie, One of the reviews I read said add 1/4 cup toasted pecans just before putting in the jars. I did and I think the carrot cake jam would be better on ice cream or pound cake with whipped cream. The pineapple flavor is the most predominant flavor. The zucchini bread and butter pickles are made with the same recipe I make my regular bread and butter pickles. You want to make sure the zucchini are small about the same diameter as cukes. I slice them on a mandolin so them are the same thickness as well as the onions. They are quite good.

I managed to get 2 quarts and 8 pints of Golden Nectar from the BBB done over the weekend. It has peaches, cantaloupe, orange juice, pineapple juice, lemon juice and honey. It ended up really thick and tasty, but I actually preferred it mixed with ginger ale. So good and refreshing.

Jen

Hi Jen!

The Ball book I have is the Complete Book of Home Preserving. It doesn't have the Golden Nectar recipe, but it has one called Four Fruit Nectar, which sounds similar, but has grapefruit juice instead of canteloupes in it. Yours sounds better! Do you mind posting the recipe when you have time?

Bonnie

No problem Bonnie. This is in the 100th anniversary edition of the Blue Book, but is the same recipe from the previous edition. It would make a really yummy Bellini too, just add champagne or a sparkling wine.

Yield: about 6 quarts

2 qts sliced peaches (I peeled them too)
6 cups cubed cantaloupe (about 1-1/2 melons)
1 qt water
7 cups orange juice (I used pulp free Minute Maid)
1-1/2 c honey (I used Linden honey)
1 c pineapple juice
1/2 lemon juice (I use bottled)

Cook sliced peaches and cubed cantaloupe in the quart of water until fruit is soft. Puree fruit and cooking liquid using a food processor or food mill. Return to pot, and add remaining ingredients to nectar. Bring nectar to a boil, stirring to prevent sticking. Ladle hot nectar into hot jars, leaving 1/4 inch headspace. Remove air bubbles. Adjust two-piece caps. Process pints and quarts 20 minutes in a BWB.

My notes are in parentheses and a blender fine worked for me to puree the peaches and cantaloupe; I took out the removal piece from the lid and held a towel bunched over the opening. Don't forget to adjust for altitude.

Enjoy,
Jen

Thanks for taking the time to type that out, Jen! On the lemon juice, is that 1/2 of a cup? Or half of a lemon juiced?

Bonnie

Cook tomatoes are CRAZY -

14 quarts of crushed tomatoes
14 quarts of hot salsa

bought more jars and
found more jars in the basement - woo hoo

1/2 cup of lemon juice; sorry about that. My keyboard is missing a few keys :-) I'll repost

Golden Nectar
Yield: about 6 quarts

I love finding jars. I'm always checking the thrift stores. Monday I found a box of half-pint jars and lids from 1976 for $3.50 that look like they haven't been used. I have a box of jelly jars that I need to figure out how to use since they don't have threads and the lids that came with them have no way to seal them. I'm thinking I may use them as drinking glasses instead, but they're fun to find.

Jen

Thanks, Jen!

I made 6 pints of Dill Sandwich Slices yesterday. Today, I made 12 half-pints of Carrot Cake Jam. My sister is visiting from out of town, and I made her help me. I'm hoping it will get her interested in canning, but if not, she'll at least appreciate the canned goods I send her during the holidays more now!

Bonnie

Jelly jars without threads were the old way of caning jelly with paraffin. Not recommended. I got a box of Bartlett pears, box of Elberta peaches and 1 batch of pear honey canned this week. I gave away boxes of tomatoes as I didn't feel like canning them and there is no room in the freezer. It is a nice fall so far without frost. I can hope for 3 more weeks but that probably won't happen.

A friend brought me a bushel of dyno roasted peppers, pounds of serranos and jalapenos and a few habaneros.

I picked 15 cups of raspberries.

Today is neglect the kids day and get this stuff out of the refrigerator.

I am praying the jam gods are smiling at me and I haven't made a bunch of syrup again - 18 pints of raspberry jam - fingers crossed for "gel".

10 quarts of spicy chili sauce and 15 pints of hot pepper relish.

I froze 3 gallon baggies of the roasted peppers and I still have half a bushel left!!!!!

Thinking of just pickling the extra peppers.

I FINALLY bought gloves to wear while handling peppers and WHAT a difference!! Highly recommended - LOL.

Deb, if any of the peppers are sweet, you might try making Roasted Red Pepper Spread. It's in the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving. If you want the recipe, just let me know. I'd like to try it, but don't have enough ripe peppers yet. It calls for 6 lbs.

All of the jam recipes I've made have used the powdered pectin, so I haven't had any trouble with setting yet. I'm afraid to try a recipe without it though.

Bonnie

Margaret, I thought they probably were the type that needed wax and I definitely wouldn't use them for canning. The lids are rusted too. I just thought they were cool looking and had never seen this type before. I'm a junkie :-)

Austinnhanasmom, I'd suggest using the plate test for gel. Even though I use commercial pectin, I like this as extra insurance. Put a plate in the freezer, then when you think your jam is ready, take it off the heat, spread some of your jam on the frozen plate and put it in the fridge for a few minutes, then check your jam for gel.

Jen

If I forget this frustration and make jam again, I'll definitely try the plate test for gel. I added powdered pectin, at the correct time this time and -

I made syrup AGAIN - UGH.

I bought the Ball book the other day - a true canner now:))

If we get trapped in the house by the H1N1, the Cook's will be eating lots of syrup...need to stock up on pancake ingredients...

It may take up to 6 weeks to gel completely. Try putting a jar in the fridge for 24 hours and see if it sets up. You can also use the "syrup" in BBQ sauces, glazes, crepes, or even in cocktails :-)

I, too, have had many frustrating experiences making "syrup" until I discovered the powder pectin for "less or no sugar" recipes. I could never bring myself to put in all the sugar required for the regular pectin and skimped on the sugar. This always set me up for failure (all puns intended - LOL). For the packets requiring less or no sugar, you stir in some of the pectin with some of the sugar called for and stir that in first. Then you add the rest of the sugar and only stir for a minute. It's made all the difference in the world. The boxes are pink and should be found in stores alongside the regular Jell.

I did see those pectin boxes and will try that next.

I have successfully made jam but I bet I was mom of one - explains it all right? One little demanding girl and all jam is ruined!! Ah - I cannot truly blame her;)) Perhaps I did use the sugar-less pectin when I had success.

I haven't yet made the carrot cake jam and I'm sure I'll have a bunch of raspberries again, so I'll try one more time, with the sugar-less pectin.

I will say that my two batches of syrup have great flavor, just wish there were fewer jars of them...

Bought a case of Honeycrisp apples at a farmer's market yesterday, and spent the entire day today in the kitchen canning. Here are the results of my efforts:

8 pints of Cinnamon Applesauce
7 half pints of Mom's Apple Pie in a Jar (from the Ball Book)
5 half pints of Linda Lou's Apple Pie Jam (from the Harvest Forum)

I used Craisins instead of raisins in the first batch of jam, which gave it a completely different look than the second batch, which looks more like an apple pie filling. Both were yummy on a slice of toast though ...

I have 15 apples left, so I may make a 2/3 batch of applesauce, since my oldest child says we need more than 8 jars. Probably will wait until tomorrow for that, I am DONE for today!

Bonnie

> Anyone have a pepper suggestion for me?
>
> Bonnie

Yes, I do have a couple of pepper suggestions. I planted a bunch of new peppers this year, and two became instant favorites!

If you like mild jalapeno types, try the TAM jalapeno (aka Texas A&M jalapeno.) This is a mild jalapeno hybrid. We found them to have the perfect amount of heat, and never ruined a dish because they were too hot.

My absolute favorite chile, however, is the Fresno. I've often found them at King Soopers. I think they have the best flavor of all the chiles when cooked down. Kind of like a roasted red bell pepper, with a bit of kick. They're supposedly equal to a jalapeno or slightly hotter, but they don't seem to overpower a dish the way a regular jalapeno can. Maybe it's because they're smaller and thinner-walled, or maybe it's because when I remove the pith and seeds, it takes most of the heat away. In any event, they are yummy!

TAM jalapeno. Not surprisingly, they look like a jalapeno...

Fresno. They're beautiful just sitting on the counter, and they add wonderful color and flavor to any dish.

Thanks, Rt! I just received some seeds for TAM jalapeno in a recent seed swap, so I'll definitely be growing that one next year. Haven't heard of the Fresno, but I'll look into that one.

2 dzn quarts of garlic dill pickles...wish I could say I grew the cukes...but I get them from a local Hutterite colony...always a great size... I grow the dill and garlic(usually) dill great this season got garlic in too late...friend gave me some german red garlic.....I also made and froze 14 quarts of applesauce from my haralsons in late August...I have my haralreds to do soon..I prefer freezing applesauce to canning... 9 pints of rraspberry jelly...I froze some and made 4 bottles of wine...good year for raspberries.... just bought a box of clemantines on sale with the thought of making a sweet marmalade

Last week, I tried home made salsa on DD11, who, after some hesitation, decided it was 'ok'. Then had some with her burrito, and then some more with her hamburger, and so on. Salsa is one of her main food groups, like catsup, and so this was a major break through. So today we made 23 quarts of home made salsa and canned them all. That took care of all the garden chili and peppers and 20 onions, and over a bushel of tomatoes. It sure is nice to have a food processor and a salsa screen on a tomato mill.

I realized I have over 150 qts already of tomato/garlic/onion/pepper base, which is almost a two year supply, and so salsa it is.

Finished off the apples, but only got 4 more pints of applesauce. That's a lot of work for little return.

Anyway, today the plan was to can some Chunky Basil Pasta Sauce, a recipe I got off the Harvest Forum, but somehow I got sidetracked and made Roasted Red Pepper Spread. Had to supplement with a few store bought red bells, since most of mine are still green. Unfortunately, I didn't roast them long enough, and it took FOREVER to peel them. Decided to put it in 4 oz. jars to use for gifts. I was able to get a dozen, and still had over a pint left over for fresh eating. Makes a great salsa substitute on a cracker or tortilla chip, and the Ball book suggests using it to make bruschetta. It would also be a great way to add pepper flavor to pasta sauce for those folks (such as my DH) that don't care for chunks of peppers in their sauce.

I've got a few trays of basil in the dehydrator, and may try to find time to make one last batch of pesto.

I don't know though ... there is still that batch of pasta sauce to be made, and everything needs to get pulled out of the garden today, as the forecast for tonight is now 32 degrees : (

David, I'm envious of your 150 qts. ... or maybe I'm envious of the space to grow enough tomato plants to have enough of them to actually make that much sauce, LOL.

Bonnie

Hey there everyone! I have immensely enjoyed reading all of your posts. David's 'Mater Fatigue Syndrome' description just about killed me. I've run out of people to give tomatoes to, as they are all overrun themselves. It's been a good tomato year here in the Grand Valley. Perhaps I'll try the UPS trick. I've already canned about ten pints of little tiny whole romas, and I'm moving on to sauce and bruschetta, I think.
We are blessed with fabulous peaches here, so I was busy making all things peachy this summer. My personal favorites were a peach-mango chutney that I've been refining over the last few years, and a peach butter made in the crockpot. I highly recommend this method, as it keeps your kitchen from overheating quite so much, and you can actually leave it and DO other things that your life requires. I left it for 18 hours on low, and it made the most awesome, flavorful stuff! I got the basic recipe from pickyourown.com, which is another cool forum I discovered.

Other than peaches and tomatoes, I have discovered that cucumbers grow like crazy here. I canned about 10 quarts of dill pickles using my not-pickle variety cukes. Thus the quart jars, as even with the ends cut off, they were too big for pint jars. They taste fantastic!

Presently, I am overrun with honeydew melons, which also grow well here. I can only eat so many of them, and wish they were can-able! If anyone knows of a tasty way to preserve honeydews, I'm open to suggestions!

Oh, also canned 8 quarts of lovely peach halves in a light lemon syrup from the "Food for Friends" cookbook. They retained that really beautiful just-skinned peachy-rose color. I couldn't stop buying cases of peaches from our local growers, and I think my family and friends will be getting these for Christmas.
I kept thinking of that Greg Brown song as I was putting up all of those peaches..."taste a little of the summer, taste a little of the summer, Grandma put 'em all in a jar."

4 dozen qts. apricots

2 1/2 dozen 1/2 pints of apricot preserves

3 dozen 1/2 pints of pickled pepper

3 dozen qts. dilled green beans

2 dozen pints hot dilled green beans

2 dozen qts peaches

2 1/2 dozen pints peach preserves

2 dozen pints pickled garden vegetable mix

3 dozen pints of salsa (due to change as I still quite a few tomatoes on the vine)

18 pints of spaghetti sauce

2 dozen qts. kosher dill pickles

2 dozen qts. pickled dill chips

2 dozen jelly jars of apple jelly (apples from our orchard)

3 dozen jelly jars of cherry jelly (cherries from our orchard)

1 1/2 dozen jelly jars of watermelon jelly

1 dozen 1/2 pints of watermelon preserves made from the flesh of a watermelon (check out the recipe in the book "The Joy of Jams, Jellies, and Other Sweet Preserves" by Linda Ziedrich - a wonderful book)

2 dozen 1/2 pints of watermelon preserves (made the traditional way with watermelon rind)

1 dozen jelly jars of wine jelly

1 1/2 dozen jelly jars of apple cider jelly

And thinking about pickling the last of my zuchini squash and pattypan squash tonight!

What can I say? My husband was stationed in Iraq until the end of August and I had alot of time on my hands to keep myself busy and so I canned alot of stuff this summer!

Next project is making and canning sauerkraut. I grew 15 heads of cabbage, a variety thats supposed to be 5 - 10 lbs a head, but half of them are 15 lbs plus. So I've got enough cabbage to make plenty.

Big problem is old timey neighbors who swear up and down that if you don't get the phase of the moon *just right*, your 'kraut will be sub-standard. The amount of sauerkraut folk lore and tricks these neighbors are willing to share is impressive. They also make astoundingly good sauerkraut - I mean, there's sauerkraut, and then there's their stuff, which is fabulous - you really can eat it out of the jar with your fingers.

But only 2 days a month the moon allows this. I have to find out which two days.....

Wow, Denice, you are prolific! I aspire to can even half as much as you have. I too, have lots of time on my hands, but I'm shamed reading your post. I'm an elementary school teacher looking for a job in a place where 300+ others are doing the same. What was it about living off the scenery in Colorado? Perhaps it's time for a career change. I've always wanted to get into landscaping...

I made honeydew-ginger jam with my melons using a recipe for Watermelon jam I've had success with before. It didn't gel at first, so I labeled it "sauce." Imagine my surprise when I loooked at the tester jar I put in the fridge and saw that it was, indeed, JAM. I must learn to be more patient.

After painstakingly blanching and removing the skins of pounds and pounds of tiny little roma tomatoes, I invested in a small table-top sauce maker. It's awesome! I notice that I get a lot more out of the tomato, with less waste. My sauce production capability has greatly increased.
Next up is some kind of zuchini/summer squash relish. I've been making calabacitas all summer, but I need something to use up all those tail-enders.

I have a hunch we had our first frost here last night. I didn't see any on the ground, but all of my big-leaved squash, melon and cuke plants took a hit. Fall is here.

The days to make sauerkraut, I found out yesterday, are the four days following the first quarter. I missed it, but the Neighbor figured it would be ok since I was only a few days off - and so the deed is done.

Now to wait a few weeks and see how it comes out.

Canned more with a few problems....my sauerkraut I've been fermenting in a large crock came out awesome so I canned it last night (got 17 1/2 pints of it....YAY!). Also made a batch of apple cider jelly, which didn't set. Had more apple cider so I made another batch of jelly, which only half set. I used Sure Jell with the first batch and MCP (which my grandma always swore by) in the second batch. I'm going to let both batches set there on the counter and watch to see if another major happens for jelling (wish me luck!).

Good luck! BTW, MCP is made basically the same as Sure-Jell. Jellies can take a long time to set, we had grape jelly that looked like a soft set 3 months later, but once opened and in the fridge it was the perfect set, soft enough to spread for a PBJ. Try putting a cooled jar in the fridge to see if it is a firmer set.

I attempted sauerkraut once and it went funky. I just don't know enough about fermenting and was using makeshift equipment, plastic tub with a plate and bag of brine for weight. I thought enough liquid came out of the cabbage, but maybe it needed more brine.

Jen

Just spent the morning canning plum ketchup and 11 pints of grape jelly. A girlfriend brought over some plum as well as grape purees that she had left over from a day of her own canning yesterday. Serious bonus for me since the hardest part was already done! Anyway, I had sworn off ever making grape jam again a couple of years ago since it's so much work preparing the grapes. My husband, in particular will be thrilled since grape is his favorite flavor jam ; )

Well, I thought I was done for the year, because I was pretty much out of jars, but I found a small hardware store in the next town over that had a couple of cases left. I also found a local orchard with Jonathan apples for $18/bushel. She even threw in a box of small mixed variety apples for the kids to eat. Compared to the $28 I paid at the farmer's market for the Honeycrisp apples a few weeks back, this was a pretty good deal. The Jonathans aren't as tart as I like, so I'm hoping the applesauce won't be too bland.

I had planned to make some Green Tomato Hot Dog Relish to finish off the tomatoes, but it looks like most of them are just about ripe, so a may end up making a batch of tomato sauce.

Hey, David, I know your not big on precise measurements, but I would love to know the basic formula for your "tomato based sauce". It sounds better than the one in the Ball book, even if it's not an official, tested recipe : )

Bonnie

Ok, Bonnie - grab your fainting couch, smelling salts, and fan.....

I pick through a 3 gallon bucket of ripe tomatoes, wash, chop in half, and run them through one of those Victorio strainer things that removes the seeds and the skins. Yield is about 2 gallons. I take that, in a 3 gallon stock pot, and put it on to simmer. If you don't have one of those tomato strainers, peeling, coring, and squeezing out some seeds works fine.

I pull out the food processor, and take 10 - 15 large (Music Pink) garlic cloves, which would be 35 - 40 regular sized ones, whir them up, use a rubber spatula to put them in a 6 qt sauce pan, along with about half a cup of olive oil (faint - fan) and start to simmer. While thats going on, I use the food processor to run through 4 or 5 large onions/leeks, pulsed until 1/4 inch dice, and a 8 - 10 large peppers/chili - more onion then peppers, same dice. Add those to the garlic, which by then is smelling pretty good, and keep stirring all that up for about 10 minutes to break down the enzymes, and it starts to smell like you think it should. The result is about 3 quarts of onions and peppers and garlic, which is rapidly cooking down.

At this point, if I have any, I'll add a cup of really good quality paprika and stir that up with the onion/pepper mix. Buy by the lb, which will do 3 batches.

By now the tomato puree is simmering away, the foam come and gone, and then I'll add 4 x 12 oz cans of tomato paste and whisk it in. I use Contadina because so far, it's the only one I can find that has any flavor. This saves hours of cooking, and keeps that fresh garden tomato taste. Then I combine the onions/pepper stuff, stir it all up, put the hot liquid in hot jars, and WB for 20 minutes. I'll usually get 9 or 10 qts. I know I should jump through the hoops of calculating for altitude and all that, but, hey.....

Anyway, this results in a thick sauce that needs 1 tsp salt / qt, and then can be modified by adding basil, oregano, what ever meatball/ground beef etc for Italian dishes, chili powder or your own ingredients for chili, or mixed up with stock and made into any kind of soup. We add more salt and olive oil and use it as pizza topping. In lasagna, to make bbq sauce, cooking with wine, anything you'd need a tomato sauce for.

So, I'm not particularly worried about botulism since what ever toxin might be there is destroyed by a few minutes simmering, and all this stuff gets well simmered or baked at 400 for 20 minutes on a pizza. I've tried making it w/o the oil, and its enough better with it that it's worth doing. The paprika works wonders, I think, a noticeable difference between the batches with and without.

I know it doesn't sound all that precise. It really isn't, some times I'll use all 'black' tomatoes, it makes a wonderful sauce, and some times all leeks/ no onions, sometimes more onions and/or more peppers, depending on what we have available. Its going to be simmered a few hours in a stew, I'm just not that worried.

Pretty simple, with all good fresh ingredients and good spices, the difference in quality in the final dishes make it worth the effort. My daughter, off at college, asks for this all the time, and she must have cases of empty jars by now. This has the DD Dorm Stamp of Approval, a full 4 Star rating.

Hmmmm ... my BWB can't do quarts unless I'm using it as a pressure cooker, so I can only do 8 - 10 pints at a time, depending on whether or not I'm using wide mouth or regular mouth jars, so I'm guessing I would need to cut the recipe pretty much in half. Does that sound about to you?

I'm up early as my son is driving over to Durango to take his ACT tests, and, of course, couldn't find his calculator, cell phone, etc., although reminded, as you can imagine, yesterday evening to get everything prepared.

*Sigh*

That recipe can be modified to fit your needs. Halving or 'third-ing' it would be fine - initially I started off smaller and extrapolated up to fit our kitchen pots and canning stuff array.

Does anyone have any compelling reasons why I would want 1/2 gallon canning jars? I was in the hardware store yesterday cutting keys (aforementioned son having lost his set) and they had cases of the things.....

David, I think those are used mostly for refrigerator pickles.

I just found out DH used the last of the Spanish Smoked Paprika on the ribs he's grilling this weekend, grrrrr.... I could use my homemade paprika, but I only have a small amount. Still waiting on the last few Alma's to turn red, so that I can make some more.

Oh, and I ordered one of those apple peeler/corer thingys, so I'm going to wait till that gets here to make the applesauce. There's another apple recipe that I am going to try too. It's apples slices in a red hot syrup. They would be really pretty on the table for a holiday meal, plus if it's got candy in it, I'm sure the kids will eat it, LOL.

Bonnie

Well, David, I don't have one of those Victorio strainers, though I am thinking of ordering the vegetable strainer attachment for my KitchenAid stand mixer. So what I did was quarter the tomatoes, throw them in a pot till they cooked down, added the onions and other stuff, and cooked down some more. Then, I used a cheapo mesh strainer, like you drain pasta with, to fish out the skins and seeds. It worked pretty well, but I think next time, I'll strain it before adding the other stuff, since most of the chunks were lost when I strained the sauce.

I chickened out on adding any oil, those people at the Harvest Forum have ruined me, LOL, and I used the processing time for tomato sauce recommended in the Ball book, which is 35 min., plus 10 more for my altitude.

The other thing was that I didn't have enough tomato paste on hand, and even though I simmered the sauce for around 2 hours, the finished product was still thinner than I thought it should be.

I started with ~ 12 lbs. of tomatoes, and ended up with only 6 pints, which is less than I expected, but at least those tomatoes didn't go to waste.

Bonnie

I thought I was done with canning for the season as well. The cherry tomatoes I rescued from the first frost a couple of weeks ago never really ripened up the way I had hoped. The few that did ripen just didn't taste the same and no one in the family really wanted to eat them so...I'm making green tomato relish (or chow chow) this morning. I have a few more half pint jars in the shed I could use. In the meantime, the eyes are starting to sting from the vinegar and onions cooking down on the stove. Never done...The kids are trying to convince me to make apple sauce too. That freezes real well so I might.

Is everyone done canning now?

I picked up a bushel of Jonathan apples last week, so I could use my new peeler/corer thingy. Here's what I've made so far:

16 pints of Apple Wedges in Cinnamon Red Hot Syrup (yummy, we've already been eating them!)
8 pints of Cinnamon Applesauce

There are still enough apples for one more batch of something. Not bad for $18 worth of apples, plus the owner threw in a box of small apples for the kids to snack on!

Once the apples are done, I think I'm through canning for a while.

Bonnie

I still have sauerkraut to go. It's busy fermenting, maybe another 2 weeks to go.

I'll wait for a warm day so I can open the windows and air the house out......

Still not done. Went to my uncle's last weekend in West Virginia. He stocked me up with pears off of his tree which I very carefully packed in my second suit case. Think I'll make ginger pear conserves when they ripen up...Canning jobs are never done.

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now they're processing

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