Canning Weekend

Thursday my grocery order was delivered.  Thanks to the lady taking my order having added several notes for the shoppers concerning the amounts ordered, I received everything.  So here are the results of my canning weekend.

Five lbs. of grapes gave me 8 pints of the fruit.  I just filled the jars and added a light syrup of 2 cups of sugar to 10 cups of water and water bath canned them for 15 minutes.  I opened a jar this morning, and found the grapes are fairly soft like the ones in a can of fruit cocktail, but the flavor is still good.  I put some in the fridge to chill and I like them even better cold.  I won't can lots of them, but they make for variety in my canned fruit.  Variety is important.  If I just had canned peaches, I would get tired of them in short order.

Next on the list was slaw/relish.  The recipe is in the comments section of the previous post.  This recipe is forgiving, so I used everything I had ordered - 10 lbs. of cabbage, 2 lbs. carrots, 1 lb. onions and 6 large green bell peppers.  I made 6 times the amount of syrup in the recipe.

I used my food processor to shred the vegetables and next time, I think I will use the shredding blade rather than the regular blade that fits in the bottom.  The vegetables turned out a little more finely chopped than I usually do them, but the taste isn't affected.  I sprinkled the vegetables with canning salt and mixed the salt in, draining them after a couple of hours. 

I heated the syrup until the sugar was dissolved, let it cool and stirred it into the shredded vegetables.  I filled 16 pint jars with slaw/relish and processed them for 15 minutes in a water bath canner.

There was some left over, so I filled 6 pint sized freezer bags  and put them in the freezer.  I will use them first, as the canned slaw stays good much longer than does the frozen.

I had 12 lbs. of boneless, skinless chicken breasts that I spread out on cookie sheets and baked until they were cooked through.  Then I cut them into about 1/2 inch cubes and filled 13 pint jars.  Other chicken breast I have canned is rather bland tasting, so this time I added 1/2 teaspoon of chicken bouillon to each jar and then filled the jars with water.  I canned these at 10 lbs. pressure for my elevation, for 65 minutes.

Last on the list were 4 lbs. of bacon.  This I cut into 1 inch pieces, lightly browned and drained them, and filled 9 half pint jars that I processed the same as the chicken.

So that was a good start on replenishing my home canned food shelves.  I still have more I need to do, but right now, I believe I will just take a nap.  :)