Sorry I've been MIA over the holiday weekend, but we've been busy celebrating and traveling. We're home now and Mike is off for a few days! Yay! The plan is to take down the Christmas decor and then work on setting up the nursery (which is going to take a lot of creative "rearranging").
How was every one's Christmas? I had a wonderful time with family and guess what I got? A CANNER! I'm so excited to be able to actually can now!! It might be tricky gardening this year with a newborn, but I figure my ancestors did it so why can't I? Plus, Mike said he would help. Yay!!
Happy Holidays everyone!!
Congrats on your canner! I received one a couple months ago as a wedding gift ~ it's exciting, isn't it? :) I can't wait to try mine out, either!
ReplyDeleteI canned for the first time this year - Christmas gifts! I must say, it was a blast! I had alot of fun doing it, and hope to do it again this year.
ReplyDeleteOne thing I found is that I didnt go way overboard with canning in one weekend. For instance, I picked many many pounds of strawberries from a local pick-your-own place (www.pickyourown.org). Instead of canning right away, I pureed (sp?) the strawberries and froze them. I picked alot of blueberries from another pick-your-own farm and froze them. Then, when it was time, I picked our red raspberries from bushes we have. Early December, I took a day and canned about 30 jars of triple berry jam.
I also did this with apples. We bought "deer apples" from an orchard a state away. They sell them for $5/box. Each box was nearly 50 lbs. Thanks to my handy dandy apple corer peeler (a gift from the Christmas before), I was making applesauce in the crockpot and made alot of apple pie in a jar as gifts. Again, I didnt do it all in one weekend. We ended up freezing the apples and I came back to peel/core them at a later date, when I was ready. All in all- everyone loved the homemade gifts!
Last, but not least, if you are looking to save some money on jars, try freecycle. I got a large box of canning jars of all sizes for free from a lady who was done with canning. They cost me nothing, which makes canning much more affordable! :-)
Good luck!