I apologize up front. This post is all over the place. Mostly because I was dialed in on canning up the garden and any fruit I could get my hands on. It's going to read like a diary and/or casual talk while working......
3 weeks ago......
Today's delightful surprise... home canned green beans. DD and I have both been canning like crazy for the last few weeks. DD has a spectacular green bean bed. It probably puts out at least 5 pounds of beans every other day. She gave me 6 pounds yesterday when I went to visit. I came home and pressure canned them immediately. We both have the new Nesco smart pressure canner which makes canning oh so easy. But, operator error can still occur. I didn't leave enough head space and one jar came out with a poochy lid. So, tonight I opened it and had it for dinner. It's the very first opened jar of beans of the season. I had forgotten how good home canned green beans are. No chemicals to make it stay weirdly green after cooking, no metallic taste from a can... just cooked green bean goodness. I followed the directions in The Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving. (This link is an AA link , I make a small commission, but it doesn't cost you anything) I cleaned the beans, cut them in half, stuffed them as tight as I could get them in a jar, put a teaspoon of salt in them and then filled the jar with boiling water, put on the lids and put them in the canner. My Great Grandmother would have been string-bean green with envy. The taste really did take me back to my childhood and the dinners with my great grandparents.
Canning Note: When the canning book says "leave a generous one inch of head space in jar" ..... Fight the temptation to fill it to the top.... and leave a GENEROUS 1 inch.
(next day)
It's taking a minute to get this blog up..... I haven't had a lot of time to sit in front of the computer. Today I canned more green beans (Yay!) ,chicken stock and a case of pasta sauce. All while looking at the 25 pounds of carrots on the dining room table that are next in line to be canned. Then its apple season! With lots of homemade apple sauce and some apple pie filling. Then I found a couple of pretty little red cabbages out in the back of the garden. I'm trying to decide what to do with them. I'm sure they will get canned, but how?
I am having a grand ol' time and I'm eternally grateful for the abundance of the garden and all the fruit I have been gifted this season from backyard trees and bushes full of apples, pears, plums, blackberries, raspberries, quince, and even grapes.... All this canning requires jars, which are at a premium this year. The thrift stores and FB Market place have lots of jars available.... because they are gouging. 99 cents and up per jar, which is silly. Because they are useless without lids and rings. So, once you buy the jars and then a box of lids and rings.... It is more expensive than a brand new case of jars. Home canners know this, so all the used canning jars are still sitting on shelves in thrift stores and garages. Note to thrift stores... It's not 2020. There is no shortage of jars.
(next week)
I started this post almost 10 days ago. Yesterday I was able to make dinner in a kitchen that didn't have the crock pot going, a big stew pot full of tomatoes going and 1 or more canners going. For dinner I made a big pot of vegetable soup and a loaf of bread in my itty bitty 'just for dinner' bread maker. I put 5 meals worth of soup in the freezer and it felt downright simple after what the last 6 or 8 weeks have been. I am not putting away the pressure canner just yet, but I have been able to put away the big water bathers (yes, I meant bathers , plural) I have three sizes of bathers .... regular size, extra large and extra small. I love the extra small it is fabulous for small batch and overflow from the smart canner. I made a case plus 4 jars of applesauce, and I got all but 3 of them in the electric canner so I pulled out the small bather. It holds 4 pints...... and that's all I need it for.
I'm not quite done yet.... I still have some collards in the garden. I might get some more growth out of them now that I have cut them back. I'm expecting every jar of collard greens to taste different. I was canning so fast and hard that towards the end I was barely seasoning them. That 25 pounds of carrots I mentioned earlier? They got peeled and canned in pint jars. I followed the process in the canning book. I sliced them, blanched them, salted them and poured hot water over them and stuck them in the canner. I got a case of pints ... And a big gallon bag for the freezer (some went into the vegetable soup last night). I thought it was pretty good considering I only grew one batch of carrots this year and I got 25 pounds from a 3x3 bed. Ive already opened one pint and they were very good and surprisingly sweet. DD has an apple tree. So, I imagine there will be more applesauce and possibly apple pie filling. And stock. I have a chicken carcass in a bag in the freezer with some veggie pieces ready to go in the crock pot. But, for the most part the power canning for the season is over. My garden this year was fairly small and the early high heat thwarted a lot of my cool weather vegetables like my broccoli but all in all it did ok. I have plenty of frozen zucchini for bread, lots of spinach still out there growing and even a few green beans.
What I got out of a pretty small garden:
Raspberries, potatoes, cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, greens, green beans, broccoli, cabbage, kohl rabi (Ok... I only got 3 kohl rabi but hey, I got some), snow peas, black-eyed peas and sugar snap peas..... squash and even one teeny tiny volunteer pumpkin all came out of three 5x5 beds, one 2x4 bed, one 3x8 bed, a bunch of containers and the border/garden thingy. The last owner built a bed that was basically a fence along two sides of the yard. About 10 feet on one side and about 8 feet on the other. It's almost 3 feet high but only 2 feet wide. I'll let you do the math.
In all, not a huge garden. But I supplemented with my local favorite farm... 30 pounds of beets (pickled and pantried), Around 50 pounds of pears from a friend. Around 30 pounds of plums (currently fermenting in a carboy in a corner..... ) More apples than I could weigh...turned into apple sauce, apple pie filling, dried apples for storage and snacking. Peaches that I brought back from eastern Washington (along with pluots for jelly). So, my pantry is full. I can not complain. Will I still need to make grocery runs this winter? Yes, but I won't be buying as much. And I will know exactly what is in my food. No Surprises.
I'm already planning next years garden while I am putting this years to bed. I need to get some horse manure from DD and a bale of straw. ... And I may have a way of deterring the deer. But those beautiful garden destroyers are a rant for a different time!
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