I'd Rather Can Than Can't

September of 2023 we waterbathed a lot of produce! Here's a bit of it.

Yep. Everyone starts with pickles and there's only so many you can store then eat.

Remember to remove the rings and rinse off the jars before storing.

It's super easy to remove skins from tomatoes if they are cored and then roasted at 350 for 30 minutes or broiled for 10-15 minutes.

Let them cool about 10 minutes and the skins slide right off.

Save the skins and dehydrate them to grind into tomato powder. This can be rehydrated as tomato paste or tomato sauce.

We were able to can pears from our tree too. I think they were a little early but the fruit did have dark stems and came right off when lifted up.

Tomatillos were another crop we grew, roasted and canned. Let me warn you now that roasted tomatillos smell like stinky feet, lol.

Can I Just? Some processes seem overwhelming to me so I like to break them down into the tiniest steps and do one step at a time, maybe one step each hour at times… For example: find lids, find rings. Get canning pot out. Find jars. Wash jars, etc.

It's like the tiny steps keep my brain from diving into overwhelm. They bypass the warning signal and at the end of all the steps, I've got canned goods!

It was such a joy to harvest from our backyard homestead! And even more fun to invite people to learn to can as well!

I come from a healthcare background where the “see one, do one, teach one” motto is popular so watching videos, doing the canning and then teaching it really helped cement the steps for me. Doing this with others is a nice socialing time too!

We processed peaches and pickles…

…and tomatoes too! Is there someone you can learn from or teach this year?

I also processsed crabapples from our tree.