My First Batch of Canned Spaghetti Sauce

I made spaghetti sauce over the weekend.  It was a three-day project!
Saturday:  buy tomatoes at the Farmer's Market, give self pep talk about canning
Sunday:  blanch, peel, boil, strain, sautee, simmer (the simmering took about 9 hours, I kid you not! - but I had the temp too low)
Monday:  simmer a bit more, pressure can 6 pints of spaghetti sauce, eat leftovers for dinner

Here are my totals at this point, including the recipe and method used:
strawberry jam, 6/09, 6 pints, pectin box recipe(?), WB
pickled cauliflower, 7/09, 5 pints, BBB, WB
pizza sauce, 9/20/09, 4 pints, Allrecipes, PC
applesauce, 9/15/09 and 9/21/09, 9 pints, Presto PC instruction book, PC
crushed tomatoes, 4 pints, PC
spaghetti sauce (20 lbs of tom.), 9/28/09, 6 pints, PC

BBB= Ball Blue Book
WB= water bath canning
PC= pressure canning

If there's one thing I've learned from this year's canning experiences, it's that it really is okay and a good thing to do the tasks in segments.  It doesn't all have to be done in one five-hour shot!  (And that's a good thing, because with kids, it can't be done in a five-hour shot!)

I keep thinking that I may be done with canning for the year, but then I think how nice it would be to have a few more pints of something on the shelves.  (Four measly pints of pizza sauce?  We can blast through that in one month, easily!)  So who knows.  I do want to pick apples one more time this year.  We shall see.

Raspberries Picked

Sunday 4 3/4 cups

Raspberries Picked

Wednesday 5 cups
Friday 5 cups
Saturday 1 cup
I suppose I should make up a spreadsheet or something pretty to keep track of this, but for now I'm doing it the quick and easy way...


Anyone have any raspberry recipes to share...particularly ones that don't require a lot of sugar???

For Blog-Addicted Canners or Wanna-be Canners

Here is a list of blogs about canning!  Beware, not all recipes are lab-tested, approved, etc. etc.  Still, it's fun to salivate over foods like peach syrup and green tomato/vanilla apple jam (huh?).

Raspberries Picked

Yesterday:  4.5 cups
Today:  4.5 cups

My dilemma...should I make raspberry jam?  I kind of hate to do that to my precious raspberries.  They're just.so.good. when fresh and/or frozen; I hate to inflict all that sugar upon them.  And I'm trying to avoid sugar myself, and doing pretty darn well, I might add, so jam would mean less raspberries for me.  Problems, problems.

And Yet More Canning

Can't stop me now.  I am on a roll with this canning business.  It's so much easier to do this when I've just done it a few days before, and don't have to consult with the instruction booklet on each detail!  Today I made a second batch of applesauce;  5 pints.  I used the apple peeler that Amanda loaned me.  Last week I didn't quite "get" it, but now that I'm past the learning curve, I love it!  It went so fast!  Fleet Farm has one on sale (and lots of other canning stuff on sale this week!) that looks very much like the Pampered Chef peeler/corer, at a much lower price, so I may go see that in person and pick one up.

Here are my totals at this point, including the recipe and method used:
strawberry jam, 6 pints, pectin box recipe(?), WB
pickled cauliflower, 5 pints, BBB, WB
pizza sauce, 4 pints, Allrecipes, PC
applesauce, 9 pints, Presto PC instruction book, PC
crushed tomatoes, 4 pints, uga.edu, PC

BBB= Ball Blue Book
WB= water bath canning
PC= pressure canning

I have all kinds of quart jars and just can't see myself using them.  Anyone have some pint jars they'd like to swap?

Canning, Continued

 I tried my hand at pressure-canning stewed (crushed) tomatoes yesterday. 

Here are my totals at this point, including the recipe and method used:
strawberry jam, 6 pints, pectin box recipe(?), WB
pickled cauliflower, 5 pints, BBB, WB
pizza sauce, 4 pints, Allrecipes, PC
applesauce, 4 pints, Presto PC instruction book, PC
crushed tomatoes, 4 pints, uga.edu, PC

BBB= Ball Blue Book
WB= water bath canning
PC= pressure canning

A few observations and tips for myself for next time:

• My 2-cup glass measuring cup works better than my ladle for filling the jars.
• I love my jar funnel;  it keeps the messes down a little.  (Still, my kitchen looked like a crime scene for tomatoes when I was done.  How did I get tomatoes on the wall?  And no kids to blame -- they were at the park with Brian!)
  
• I heated the jars and lids in a roasting pan;  this worked well and kept things off the stove (thanks, Amanda, for the tip!)
• I had lots of mushy tomatoes as I was coring and dicing.  They were really hard to work with and I composted more than I wanted to.  I think there were a couple of reasons for this:  some tomatoes had been frozen, and some I overcooked when blanching to remove the skins (believe the instructions when they say 30-60 seconds;  that's really all you need!).   The end product looks more like a juice or thin sauce than stewed tomatoes. 
• A wire basket might be a nice addition to my supplies:  that way I can blanch lots of tomatoes at once and not have to use a slotted spoon with them individually.
  
• Many of my romas this year are too small for canning and not worth the effort.  By the time I take the stem out;  there's not much left (especially with the mushy ones).  Don't bother with the tiny ones!

I'm always open to more tips for canning!  Feel free to post yours here!  I'd much rather learn from your mistakes!  :)

Short 'n Sweet

Amongst the flowers in Aaron's garden, we included a few short rows of carrots this year, at his request.  It was an odd request, as he has no interest in eating them, but we were hopeful and happy to go along with it.  The last time we tried to grow carrots was one of our first years of gardening, so maybe 2001 or so.  They didn't amount to anything, and we chalked it up to hard, clay soil and gave up.

The variety we tried this year was called Short 'n Sweet, because the seed package boasted, "grows in heavy soils."  We are impressed with the outcome and will be trying this again!  Some of the shapes are hilarious and the carrot-eaters in the family like the taste.  Aaron was thrilled at this morning's harvest, took a nibble of one, and said "Pfffft (spitting it out), I hate carrots!"

Raspberry Harvest

I picked raspberries yesterday and got about 7 cups.  We might be at a peak here, though there are still lots of immature berries on the canes.  I tend to pick about every other day but could go to every day at this point.  I see lots of smoothies in our futures this winter!  I'm so glad we've continued to water the berries throughout this dry summer.  I can't say I've been as attentive to the tomatoes, and it shows. 

My Adventures in Canning

I have a love/hate relationship with canning.  I love the gardening, harvesting, cooking, and of course the end result.  Seeing those jars of colorful food lined up on a shelf, and taking one down and opening it up -- at room temperature, no thawing required -- that's extremely rewarding!  However, the actual canning process is frustrating to me.  There are so many instructions...simmer the lids, don't boil; remember to get the air bubbles out;  wipe the rim with a wet cloth;  try and time everything just so, so that the food, lids, and hot water bath/pressure canner are all ready at precisely the same point in time;  make sure not to scald the kids; process the jars exactly right or your spaghetti sauce could KILL everyone!  Oh, and it's such HOT work!  And then I wonder, after cooking the living daylights out of the food, if there are any nutrients left at all.

I'm still a relative newbie to canning;  my first time canning solo was last year, when I made and water-bath canned one batch of strawberry jam.  This year though, I've decided to suck it up and increase momentum a little bit.  I figure that the more practice I get, the more confident I'll feel about the process. I've also begun pressure canning;  even though it's more investment in supplies for a project I'm ambivalent about, I can process things more quickly and use less energy while doing it.

Anyhow...here's what I've canned so far this year:

strawberry jam, 6 pints
pickled cauliflower, 5 pints
pizza sauce, 4 pints
applesauce, 4 pints

Theoretically I should have canning in my genes.  My maternal grandmother has always been into gardening and canning.  As a kid I'd wander into her cellar and see shelf after shelf of canned food...pickled beets (my favorite!), tomatoes, salsa, green beans, ground cherries (another fave of mine!), and more.  Already this summer, at the age of 82, she has canned 90 pints of salsa!  Ninety!  Wow.  Very impressive.  Well, she's had the help of her daughters, but still!  Trust me, I will never live up to that legacy.  I will be shocked if I ever total 90 pints of salsa over my lifetime.

Raspberries

This is my favorite time of the season -- raspberry time!  Our fall-bearing raspberries have been slowing starting to ripen, a few here and there, over the last few weeks.  Audra, Aaron, and I go out into the backyard and fill up on them, one by one.  Yum!  No bucket needed.  When there are too many for us to snack on at one time, we know that the season is in full swing!  Today I picked about two cups' worth with my little 19-month-old panhandler by my side (the only currency she accepts is brambles).  Believe me, the two of us could have polished off all two cups right then and there, but I hid some of them from her instead, so that I'd have some to bring into the house.  I sure hope no one is allergic to bee stings, because there are zillions of bees out there.  They seem to mind their own business, though a couple weeks ago I was stung in the cutting garden.

When any quantity of berries makes it into the house, I rinse them, quick-freeze them individually on cookie sheets, and scrape them off into gallon zipper bags.  It's easy to add more berries to the bags as they roll in.  We enjoy them all winter in smoothies and baked oatmeal.

Raspberry

Jazzberry

Razzamatazzberry

Berryband 

Merryband

Jamming in Berryland

Raspberry rabbits

Brassberry band

Elephants skating 

On raspberry jam

~ From the children's book Jamberry by Bruce Degen

Our Bonus Garden

This year, we acquired a bonus garden! And best of all, it didn't require purchasing more land, ripping up sod, or driving to a community garden! The house next door is up for sale, and the owner moved into a retirement apartment last fall. It has a lovely vegetable garden of about 15'x20' that's been lovingly tended for - literally - decades, and has fantastic, powdery soil. While it's on the market, she is paying my husband, Brian, to do snow removal and take care of the lawn.

In May I realized that this garden was going to turn into a jungle of weeds if no one did anything about it, and that gave me a brainstorm: we could cultivate her garden! So with the blessing of both the owner and her power-of-attorney, we jumped right in. In early June, we planted four packets of organic corn seeds, in two different varieties. I was so excited about having our own corn! Several years ago we planted a few rows of corn in our own garden, and I enjoyed it, though Brian was always less than enthusiastic about corn because of the amount of space it requires. That would be no concern this year. I also planted five rows of cutting flowers, which I was also excited about because I do very few annual flowers; I mainly focus on edibles and most of my flowers are easy-care perennials. We realized that there was some risk involved, as we could lose it all if the house sold before harvest time, but we were willing to take the chance.

And then -- the rains hit! We had days and days of rain, it seemed! We thought we'd have to build an arc. I patiently waited and waited for the corn to germinate. The packet said it would take 10-20 days, and I knew that the cool weather wasn't going to help. Well, after giving it the benefit of the doubt and a good three weeks +, we admitted defeat on the corn after realizing we wouldn't get more than a handful of corn seedlings. Finally we took the easy way out and purchased 10, yep, 10 plum tomato plants and four pumpkin seedlings, all on clearance, and planted those. Sure, I wouldn't need that many tomatoes (already having 12 tomato plants of several varieties in our own garden), but we can easily find homes for the surplus. And what family with kids can't use pumpkins at Halloween?! All of these plants, plus the existing rhubarb and chives in the garden took up about 80% of the space and left me feeling satisfied that we'd made good use of that beautiful space next door.



And now, the pumpkin vines are going wild and threatening neighboring plants and the lawn. The tomatoes are a little slow (like everything else this year, but even more so), but just yesterday I noticed that some were turning color, so I'm confident that they will amount to something. And the flowers - the greatest success of all, as you'll see in my first post. I'm definitely hooked on cutting flowers now. And by contrast, we've had very little rain all summer since those early rains.

And the house? No offers yet. The first realtor's contract ran out last week, and now a new realtor is listing it. It's a great house -- brick, 1.5 stories, 5 bedrooms, and a lovely garden out back! It's within walking distance of a number of restaurants and a grocery store. We're really hopeful that a nice family with young kids (and green thumbs) moves in.

Cutting Garden!

(rows 1,2, 4)

This is the first year I've had a cutting garden, and I'm loving it! All of my cutting flowers were started from seed. In our yard, we have Sensation Mix cosmos (pinks and white) in Aaron's garden. They are beautiful, and very prolific! Some of the stems are taller than I am! In our garden next door (more on that later), I have five five-foot rows of flowers. Front, to back, they are: two rows of zinnias (mixed colors), Torch Tithonia (aka Mexican sunflowers, orange), and Bright Lights Mixed cosmos (orange, yellow, white), and more Sensation Mix cosmos. The zinnias are gorgeous! I'll definitely do more of those in the future, and I'd love to try other varieties, especially some with larger flowers. The Mexican sunflowers are beautiful, but they definitely need more than one foot between rows. They stems are huge and heavy and they've started to lean on the zinnias. They're also much taller than the 3' the seed package indicated...more like 6'! The stems are soft and fuzzy, which was fun and unexpected. When cut, they like to droop, so they're not my favorite cutting flower, but they are pretty. Row 4 (Bright Lights cosmos) is doing so-so. That, too, could use more space. There's lots of foliage but not very many flowers. I like them but don't necessarily need to do them in the future. Finally, the Sensation Mix cosmos in this garden are pathetic and nothing like those in Aaron's garden. Although they're all from the same seed package, most of the seedlings were nibbled on mercilessly by assorted small animals this spring. I have a feeling that the calla lillies in DS's garden were a deterrent to the hungry pests (nothing planted near calla lillies was touched -- it was wonderful!), but there were none in the garden next door to protect these cosmos.

(Aaron's Sensation Mix cosmos)