Canning

A couple of months ago my precious friend Sherry (in the pictures) introduced me to Bountiful Baskets, a food co-op that works to get local produce at a discounted price by buying in bulk (bulk, I love that word!)  You make your "contribution" and then you pick up your allotment of 50/50 fruit/vegetables at the designated pick-up location.  You can do it as often as you choose, there is no commitment.  Once you order the main basket of produce, you can order additional "add-on" products, like large quantities of a specific kind of produce or seasonal offerings like cinderella pumpkins.  (Check out the web site for more specifics, it's pretty cool!  And you can even upgrade your basket to organic produce if you choose!)  So after doing it a couple of times, I noticed one of the add-ons was 40 pounds of tomatoes.  I love tomatoes, so I asked Sherry if she wanted to try canning them!  We decided we would start small, since neither of us are experienced canners.  It was a little bit of an investment to buy the supplies (she had the water canner, but we had to get a few other things) but we wanted to try so we decided it was worth it!

 

We were very enthusiastic at the beginning.  Sherry scored the tomatoes to prepare them for blanching.  And you can see Alaina in the back helping sterilize the jars!

 

 

She is such a good photographee!

Our first jar.  We were so proud!  We didn't know how much work the rest were going to be!

We managed to get enough to start the first set in the water canner.  We still had a lot left to go.

Extricating the first jars.  It's amazing how having the right tools makes all the difference!  I can't imagine trying to lift those jars out without the handy dandy jar lifter!

After the first couple of sets of jars through the canner, we decided to make tomato sauce instead.  Sherry is squeezing the tomatoes.  By this time, we were both very tired! We should have started a little sooner in the day.  And planned for it to take a little longer than intended!

Here's cooking down the tomatoes for the sauce.  Much faster!

Sherry made the sauce.  It was really good!  I think she enjoyed the hands on work!

Here's my dainty self poking all the air out of the jar.  Not wanting to get messy!  I was on kid duty after all!

My stove got quite a workout!  We had all four burners going.  There was tomato residue everywhere!  Good thing I like tomatoes!

 

The poor kids did get slightly neglected.  Alaina and Justin ended up having to feed each other!

So the next time apples were one of the add-ons, honeycrisp apples.  We got 50 pounds of those!  Sherry came up with the idea to make applesauce and my kids can eat a ton of applesauce, so that sounded good to me.  We made both plain and cranberry applesauce.  So yummy for the holidays!  We bought a food mill to make it go faster.  Another one of those handy dandy, essential tools!  So easy, even Justin can do it!

 

Sherry finished up for him.  But Justin was a good helper.  He was willing to be a taster too!

 

 

I wish I had given in and bought a food mill when I was making baby food.  So much easier to make peas than with a strainer!

 

This time I was a better mommy and I fed my kids myself rather than letting them fend for themselves.  It helped that I had warm applesauce to offer them!  Sherry had to take the picture to document the small successes of our newest venture!

 

We are watching those add-ons to see what crazy, hair-brained stuff we can do next.  It has been an absolute blast experimenting with canning.  And hanging out with Sherry.  Alaina can say "Sherry" so well!  It's melt-your-heart cute!  And Justin adores having Sherry come to our house.  I am pretty sure our husbands think we're crazy, but I am okay with that!