Pickling and Canning

I had promised a friend or two to share pictures and descriptions of my pickling and canning activities this fall. Here they are a few months late.

We had a bountiful harvest of green beans, corn, peppers, tomatoes, beets, squash, and lettuce. Of course, our family of two couldn't possibly eat all of the harvest before they went bad. Therefore, canning and pickling! Besides that, we had a threat of frost in the middle of September so I decided to harvest our remaining green tomatoes early instead of risk them being frozen overnight. With those I made enough sweet pickle relish to last three or four years. I hope our friends like canned goods because they're probably going to get plenty of them over the next year. :)

The steps of making pickle relish: Clean the veggies, cut off undesirable parts, process in a food processor, measure product to match recipe...

...Place all chopped veggies in a bowl, add salt for brining, cover with water, cover bowl and allow to brine overnight.

One of three bowls of sweet pickle makings. Time required to this point: about six hours. The next day the veggies are drained and cooked in a sugar/vinegar/spice soup, strained, and put into pint jars. They are then boiled for 10 minutes to heat up the liquid and allow for creating a seal as the liquid cools. Time required for canning: about 20 minutes per batch. Batches this year: ~12.

I experimented with our tried and true recipe this year. One batch has half sugar half molasses in it, and two batches have various amounts of garlic and jalapeno peppers for those who like spice.

The process of making dilly beans: clean and snap ends off beans. Put head of dill, garlic, and spices in jar. Put in as many beans as possible into the jar. Top off jar with boiling salt/vinegar/water recipe.


Spices in jar. Cayenne pepper added as an experiment.


Ta da!

The set up for all canned goods: one pan to heat the lids, heated filler for the jars, boiling water for the "hot water bath" and preheated oven full of empty, clean jars. The goal is to have everything hot in the jar at the same time so that the jars don't burst during the hot water bath.

Dilly beans cooling. Yum! And super easy!

One bowl of beautiful tomatoes. Believe it or not, I don't like raw tomatoes. However, I make the best spaghetti sauce. Imagine this bowl overflowing and that is about half our harvest.

This spaghetti sauce is almost done. The tomatoes were put whole (minus stems) into the food processor and left on the stove on low for 8 hours to cook it down. I then sauteed a big skillet of sausage, garlic, onions, peppers, celery, and lots of herbs. I combine them then season to taste, and let it cook for another hour or so.

Perspective.

The cans of spaghetti sauce are boiled for 60 minutes to kill any remaining bacteria (overabundance of vinegar allows for the short boiling time for the pickle relish) before being cooled and shelved. I thought I had a picture of the shelves full of canned goods but apparently not. I'm going to have to post that because it makes me so happy!

Four months of preparing the soil; planting, cultivating, watering, and feeding the plants; and one month straight of harvesting and canning produced shelves full of pickled beets, dilly beans, green beans, pickle relish, and spaghetti sauce. Besides those things I grew myself I also prepared and canned blackberry jelly, apple sauce, and peaches. We also have pumpkin and squash in the freezer ready for Shoshana's meals. It may be a lot of work, but I enjoy it. Especially doing canning with other people, like my mom. It makes a hard job a bit more enjoyable. Sometimes the process is really tedious but I still enjoy most of it (probably all except the inevitable back ache of canning all day for four weeks straight). My favorite part is definitely wiping down the cooled jars and putting them on the shelf. My second favorite part is working the soil with my hands.

Shelves full of jars!