Canning today 2023 Part II

The friendliest place on the web for anyone that enjoys cooking.
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
See posts with no answers
I didn't realize how behind I was on this thread. Just caught up. My salsa I did early on in the season, cause usually I do just tomatoes, then run out of them before I get to the salsa. Once the peppers were ready in the garden I made about 14 pints, which is enough for me for the year. Half I made spicy the other half mild. Also did a bunch of pickles early on, but I still have so many from last year that Im trying to use up, so I cut back on the number I canned, and now I just make fermented pickles that I keep in the fridge and eat on a daily basis. I think I still got like 6 quarts of them in the fridge. My Kirby's are finally just about done for the year. Got a bunch of frozen currents in the freezer that Im about to make some jelly out if ( more to free up room in the freezer than the need for jelly). I really tried to cut back on the tomatoes. I used to make 52 quarts , enough for 1 a week for the year, cause thats what I needed. With the kids out of the house, dont need that many, but the tomatoes keep on coming. I got about 1/2 that now, but It looks like Im going to have a second wave of tomatoes. I've also been doing other things with the tomatoes to store ( gazpacho which I freeze, the salsa).
 
@larry_stewart I feel like I'm always trying to make room in the freezer, so I can more stuff.
Mr bliss and I were just talking about tomato sauce (plain). We were trying to figure out about how much we use a year, just us two. We have spaghetti w/tomato mushroom sauce every week, and we make a salad dressing with another quart of tomato. So we estimated we use between 60-80 quarts a year. We are very tomato-y. lol

We started our last batch of applesauce. Truth be told I thought we were done with them but mr bliss wanted just one more batch which is cooking in the roaster now. We'll have 35 qts done this year once these are finished.

While that was cooking we made a batch of 7 qts of canned vegetable soup and I added rosemary to this one. That one is cooling in the pressure canner. It's just perfect cool rainy cloudy weather for canning and the house smells like apple sauce and vegetable soup w/rosemary.

For the vegetable soup, I prepped corn and carrot and green beans and froze them, which made making the soup come together very fast. Just assemble all the ingredients and bring to a boil for 10 minutes, put in jars, and pressure can. I'm planning on more of those but instead of potatoes I'll use cubed squash and instead of green beans I'll prep some black beans for canning. So we'll have some variety.
 
Yesterday we canned 12 qts of tomato sauce.
We're cooking down another 12 qts of tomato sauce, to can tonight, around 8 or 9 pm.
Then we'll take a tomato sauce break until more tomatoes ripen.
 
We made another batch of tomato sauce, 11 qts sealed, running total of 59 qts so far.
Today we're canning pear sauce. It took 120 pears to fill the roaster the first time, we'll add more in a few hours when it starts to cook down. We're aiming for 12 qts.
 
larry_stewart said:
Bliss, when you're canning, preserving, drying all these things, do you have a target amount of how much you need ( or want)?
Click to expand...
I'm not good with inventory on dried goods yet. I just know I run out of dried fruit we eat as snacks, so I keep dehydrating apples, bananas, pineapples (when they are on sale).
60-80 qts of tomato sauce/year. We've had bad tomato years, so we keep another set in case we have a bad tomato year. It all kind of equals out over the years and they are labeled by year. We use the oldest first, and the newest stuff goes in the back, the oldest stuff in the front.
We like to have at least 50 qts of apple sauce and pear sauce combined per year, and more for the next year. (Because we never know if we'll have a good apple or pear year.) I use it in baking to replace oil, plus we eat it by the bowl.
30-40 pints of sweet sour pickles. 10 pints of dill pickle slices for hamburgers. 20 qts of corn, and 20 of green beans. Whatever soups we think of, up to 30 qts. Ketchup we make a couple cases of pints at a time, anytime of year. Mustard I make a case at a time. Salsa, we'll aim for 3 cases (36 pints).
There isn't a limit on fruit puree/jam. It just depends on what fruit we can get, usually on reduced prices, or sale prices. So we probably have 60-80 1-cup jars of those in all different flavors spanning 4 years. I still have brown sauce and mild hot sauce from previous years so I'm not planning on canning any right now. Canned pineapple, a few cases, in January usually if they go on sale for $1/each fresh.
edit to add: I forgot, we canned mushrooms in 8 oz jars, 4 cases of them or more, when aldi's ran a sale on mushrooms last year. We can never have enough mushrooms.
 
These are the only peppers I pickle - some escabeche, with the jalapeños. I also added some datil, and some Thai peppers, slit opened, to heat it up some, as the jalapeños were mild this year. I'll find out eventually, how much of that heat transfers. Funny thing about the heat transfer - years ago, when I first made this, I realized that the carrots would end up hotter than the peppers, after sitting about a month - sort of like a heat magnet.
A little over a pound of peppers, and 12 oz each of onions and carrots, ready to salt them, before cooking. by pepperhead212, on Flickr

Vegetables added to the onions, after cooking those with the blended seasonings. by pepperhead212, on Flickr

4 pints of escabeche, after a 15 minute water bath. by pepperhead212, on Flickr
 
@pepperhead212 I really like when people make specialties that they like and they can it. Looking in the pantry looks like visiting a specialty, or import store, or deli to pick up your favorites.

The 12 qts of pears sealed from yesterday. Today we're doing another batch of pear sauce today, hopefully 12 qts. The full roaster is cooking down now, and another 40 pears will go in around 3 pm, and we'll can it tonight. The pears are juicy and rock hard right now.

edit: 12 qts sealed for today. 2023 pearsauce 24 qts total.
 
Last edited:
12 qts of tomato sauce today, running total 71 qts 2023.

I'm tired of running the roaster and canner and need to take time to cook tomorrow and be able to use all my other appliances. :)
 
I took two days off canning for cooking to catch up.
This is peeled sliced pears in the roaster when we were canning pear sauce.
snackssquash-002.jpg
 
Yesterday and the day before 30 pints of onion/pepper mix.
Today, 9 pints of diced beets.
We're running out of garden stuff to can. (yippee)! One batch of tomatoes maybe, and maybe more onion/pepper mix.
 
I gave away some squash and peppers to three neighbors. I just kept what I thought we could still use.
I'm canning 12 qts of tomatoes that I'd washed and sliced in half in the freezer. I lugged those out late last night and finished thawing them this morning. They're cooking down in the 18 qt roaster oven. The air is full of moisture and the house seems warmer than usual. We'll can them around 8:30 or 9 pm.

A crazy thing, I was checking for sale prices (on their webpages) and I actually found some canning jars at fleet farm in WI. They were country classics pints for $4.99/dozen and quarts for $5.49/dozen, which is about half price. The next day the manager marked down the wide mouth jars another $0.50/dozen, so we loaded up with many many cases. We can use the pints and quarts for honey next year. We never see them marked down this cheap. I'm so grateful! If you are looking for canning jars on sale, now would be about the right time, right after harvest season.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

larry_stewart
Cooking Withdrawal Syndrome, Do you get it? I sure do!!
Replies
4
Views
2K
rodentraiser
rodentraiser

Latest posts

Back
Top Bottom