Adventures in Canning

You know you have gone off the deep end when there are 4 kids running around your house (and it's an utter disaster!), tomato sauce everywhere, tomatoes everywhere, the sound of a pressure cooker steaming, boiling water on the stove, mason jars in the sink, and 3 women in the kitchen. This is what this past Monday looked like at my house! Two of my friends and I bought veggies in bulk from a local farm. I bought 75 lbs of tomatoes, 30 lbs green beans, 30 lbs cream peas, 60 lbs purple hull peas, & 30 lbs butter beans! I have either canned or frozen it all. Anyway, back to the events of Monday... I am the only one out of my friends who has a pressure cooker, so they all came over to my house so we could work on it together. We blanched, skinned, cored, & diced nearly 100 lbs of tomatoes! (none of us want to see another tomato for a while)  From those we made tomato sauce & canned diced tomatoes. It was messy and a lot of work. We also canned green beans and purple hull peas.  All of this while 4 children under the age of 3 played & roamed around the house, us trying to get them to nap at various times and feed them! It was fun and we all look forward to doing it again next summer. I am going to have fresh veggies to eat all winter. How cool!! 

Staci cutting tomatoes

Pouring purple hull peas into a pillow case to be frozen (a tip from her grandma)

Stephanie blanching and cutting tomatoes

Our tomato sauce boiling

Diced tomatoes..yum!

We are all trying to eat better foods, more organic fruits and veggies from local farms, and making many things from scratch. Stuff really does taste better when it's made from scratch with fresh ingredients. One day Josiah (and my future children) will be in the kitchen learning and helping to can, freeze & preserve fresh veggies. I hope to be able to teach them many things about cooking, gardening, homemaking, ect, so they can be more self sufficient when they become adults.

Today I am going to attempt to make some strawberry preserves... I'll let you know how it goes! :)