Monday, July 9, 2018

Just Busy

So Friday I peeled and cut up 8 lbs. of carrots.  Saturday I packed them into jars and ran them through my pressure canner.  They yielded 16 pints.  One jar broke so I have 15 to add to my shelves.

Sunday Duane made a Farmer's Market run looking for strawberries.  We waited too long for there wasn't a strawberry to be found.  He did find cucumbers and brought home a small sack of tiny ones for baby dills and another larger sack full of bigger cukes for whole dill pickles, along with a nice bunch of dill.  In the afternoon I washed them and got them ready to pack in jars, which I will do in the morning.

I have corn and peas in the freezer waiting to be canned, but I think I will wait on those.  The temperature is creeping back into the 90+ range and my little apartment heats up when canning.  But all in all, it has been a fairly productive weekend.

11 comments:

  1. Vicki, have you ever tried canning dilly green beans? For some reason every time I tried making pickles with cukes they turned out mushy....green beans were my go to for pickles. They are a favorite at my house. Also, I like that you spread out the canning chores over more than a one day period. How do you feel about it?

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    1. Sue...I have never tried dilly beans. I suppose I should have when I still had a garden, but it seemed like at the time I had all I could do to can the basics to feed my family. I have never been able to make good dill pickles from scratch. The crispness was ok, but the taste was not. I read somewhere that folks use Pickle Crisp (found in grocery stores). Me...I cheat. It's Mrs. Wages Dill Pickle Mix all the way. However, I make awesome bread and butter pickles from scratch. :)

      This prepping the vegetables one day and doing the canning the next day is working well so far. I may be able to do more than I thought I could, and that is a good thing.

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  2. Nice and slow like the turtle vs the rabbit. The difference between young and full of energy, and experienced.

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    1. Rob...'Young and full of energy' has left the building, but 'experienced' may win out in the end. :)

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  3. LOL - I love green beans, but I HATE dill. The thought of Sue adding dill to green beans just makes me cringe! ;-)

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    1. Oh, come on, Gorges...we need to try new things. It is never too late to teach these old dogs some new tricks. :)

      I might tease you little, but I get it. You would have to beat me with a club to get me to eat liver, and even then I doubt I could. :)

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  4. Your excitement about getting some canning done jumps off the page. Good job!
    Me - I did a little too much over the weekend while visiting friends. My little crash in energy right now was worth it though.
    Cheers, SJ

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    1. SJ...I think the excitement comes with the realization that I can still do some canning when I thought I could not. Granted, I will not be blanching and peeling 50 lbs. of tomatoes any time soon, but there are still lots I can do.

      I think tomorrow will be a quiet day for me. Probably the rest of the week as well. Temps are headed toward 90 degree days and over that mark by the weekend. I hope to make some progress on Boston's afghan which is taking forever to finish. Sometimes, though, knowing we will suffer for it, we just go ahead and overdo, don't we. Most times, as you say, it is well worth it.

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  5. Its been hot here too. I will most likely be dealing with freezing sweet corn in a few weeks too.

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    1. Kristina...I don't know why, when I have central air, that the outdoor heat and humidity bothers me, but it does. Sometimes I can put off canning or dehydrating until the weather cools down some, but sometimes a person just needs to get it done anyway. Luckily, I can wait a bit for the next round of canning.

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  6. I started making a canner full or whatever I had in small batches. Eventually, I had the 50 quarts I wanted. In the end no one knows that all those jars were done the easy way. The thought of doing 100 quarts in one day like my mother would do, just paralyzes me with thoughts of what it would take for me to do that. She did not have ac and was 30 years younger than I am. But, for the last 20 years of her life, she did no canning, and she died at 71, younger than I am now.

    Nice to know about Wages. If I make pickles, I won't eat them.

    Even with ac, try a fan on the floor. Somehow, that makes it more bearable.

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