canning madness

we are in the midst of a full force canning madness right now!! we had a very cool summer (and thus not a great harvest). typically most of our canning would be done by now usually by the end of aug or early sept. we did an mid-summer jam can (blueberry, raspberry, strawberry jams) in july and not much since (though i have been freezing any vegetables we harvested in the meantime so it wasn't a complete loss).

now with the frost looming we had to throw in the towel and finally pull what tomatoes we had and put up what we could. todd's mom judy came out to visit last weekend and got caught up in processing tomatoes for sauce (bless her heart she just dove right in coring and chopping). even with our paltry harvest we managed to put up some salsa, pizza sauce and plain old canned tomatoes.

we also canned a fair bit more green than red this year. in addition to canning the typical dilly beans (just delicious in a good bloody mary), we also for the first time put up some pickled green tomatoes and some green tomato chutney this year (we had to do something with all those green tomatoes!!!). and last but not least some salsa verde with the tomatillo harvest and the chiles.

now this time of year we normally are canning our pears (which is why with the summer harvest and the fall harvest all going into cans in the last couple of week i can truly call it a canning madness).... we canned two batches of pear butter, plain old pears in simple syrup, and for the grownups some pears in brandy....yummm!

thankfully i think we are near the end of our canning craze....maybe with all our 'extra' time we can actually finish painting our house...and the garlic needs to get in the ground...and... and.. and...needless to say life continues to be busy on our homestead in the hood.