What are you canning now?

[MistyMountain]

That's what I was doing last night, too! Dh calls them Mountain Berries, so we label it Mountain Berry Jam. These are almost ready for the freezer. Double what I made last summer, so plenty of littles to send home with guests at Christmas. We just love having a taste of summer in the middle of winter!

 

[Christabean]

Picked a whole bunch of wineberries and turned them into jam tonight!

Whoah, those look delicious! Are they like raspberries? I'm not familiar with wineberries.

 

[Raech]

that bowl would not have made it to jelly in my house, it might not have even made it to the house

 

[bauerdog]

Whoah, those look delicious! Are they like raspberries? I'm not familiar with wineberries.

They are very similar to raspberries in appearance. They are a little tart, but excellent flavor. It is an invasive species, so eat um up! They tend to grow in dappled light. So look for them at the edge of tree lines. Free yummy food that I don't have to water or tend to. Deer tend to leave them be for the most part too...

 

[bauerdog]

that bowl would not have made it to jelly in my house, it might not have even made it to the house

Yup, you can't see how much I ate while picking. No need for dinner for me that night. That bowl took less than an hour to fill. I plan on picking again Saturday, after the weather stops being so gross here. Too humid and hot to go picking with long sleeves and pants in the woods.

 

[KimBom2016]

I make ketchup today

 

[hippiestink]

Blauwshokker peas are putting out tons of purple pods, so I should get a lovely pea harvest this year. Gonna be fun canning peas, peas and carrots, and pea soup!

 

[Beekissed]

Going to can up a mess of sweet corn this weekend. Been cleaning out my canning shelves today and plan to change a few things in how I can this year to maximize space and ease of use of the canned items.

Also plan to dry more things this year, make more use of the chicken parts and such, boil things down to make a concentrate to maximize jar space, etc.

It's quality vs. quantity this canning season.

Today I dumped old and otherwise undesirable canned items and gave them to the animals...nothing went to waste, not even the hot peppers. Emptied jars of rabbit, squirrel and a jar of two of chicken on the bone and picked all the meat I could off the bones....all that meat was diced small and is now marinating in jerky spices and will be dried as soon as today's batch of tomatoes come out of the dehydrator. Will store that dried meat in the freezer and use it for flavoring up stir fry, soups, fried taters, etc.

One batch of tomatoes have been dried and ground down to a powder....not much left over when that's all done but I hope to garner enough to use in rebatching last year's salsa to thicken it up a bit. Will empty all those jars, cook down the salsa~it was much too thin and had too much cilantro last year~ and add more tomato and peppers to freshen it up a bit, and rebatch it. I want less jars but thicker salsa. My tomato crop is blighted this year so I won't have enough tomatoes to can up fresh salsa, so this seemed the best way to go. My peppers are also blighted, so will have to buy peppers for freshening the salsa batch.

 

[wyoDreamer]

So, I picked tart pie cherries for canning up some pie filling. Pitted all the cherries, got everything ready, canner going, jars washed and heating in the hot water, juice measured and sugar added, went to grab my Clear Jel to premeasure for when the juice was boiling ... ACKK! all I had was instant Clear Jel! Didn't even know they made instant.

Now I have to wait until Monday to buy the regular Clear Jel at the Mennonite store.

 

[wyoDreamer]

Bee- I love having dehydrated tomatoes on hand. Makes it so easy to thicken stuff, especially fresh salsa.

Anyone have any information on the BPA issue of soda cans used for a solar dehydrator? All I can find is info on the BPS leashing out into liquid contents. If soda cans are put out in the sun and heated - does the air flowing through them pick up BPA's and contaminate the food that is being dehydrated?