Canning 2016

My last week in (mostly) pictures:

We made an attempt at picking our own raspberries.  A little more challenging than I anticipated, but JJ was a trooper in the hot sun, and we ended up with 5 quarts worth!

I ran 10 miles with my friends Toddra and Jen, but forgot to get a picture of us before they left. So, a selfie in Flat Rock is all you get. Who smiles that much after running 10 miles?  The girl who is happy to be DONE running ten miles!! 😉

After running 10 miles, I went and picked more tomatoes at my father-in-law’s garden.  Dude. I was tired when I was done.

That’s what processing tomatoes looks like.

I woke up Sunday morning to this lovely sight in our barn cooler—28 cups of jalapenos, seeded and chopped for me.  My husband loves me.  🙂

After spending 2 ½ weeks going back and forth to my father-in-law’s for tomatoes, I found myself about 10 pounds short on Sunday afternoon.  Lucky for me, I have a neighbor (who is a real farmer!) who had plenty in his garden, and he not only let me pick a bunch, he gave me an adorable basket to put them in. 🙂

My pride and joy.  For the first time in 13 years, I was able to successfully grow blackberries, and not just a few! I ended up getting about 3 quarts out of just one bush, and that allowed me to make 15 jars of blackberry jam.  From my garden to my table—I am so proud of those 15 jars!

I had a salsa “oops” on Sunday night. I was talking to my husband while mixing up ingredients for the first batch of salsa, but I stopped to carefully count out six 1 ½ cup measures of jalapeno peppers into the pot—only, after I was done and had already mixed it in, I realized I’d used the 2-cup measure! 😮  You might think that would just make for spicier salsa, but the reality is that disproportionate measurements of ingredients messes with the acidity of the canned product, and can cause mold growth. Yikes!  My husband suggested I just triple the batch (it was originally a double batch), which was a great idea, but the pot wasn’t big enough, so as he was on his way out the door for work, he helped me do pot-swapping.  That’s not easy to do when you’re talking about 60 pounds of tomatoes plus vegetables in one pot!

That’s Monday morning’s sunrise before a 3.5 mile run.  One of my better runs, too!

After I finished canning, I had 28 pounds of onions leftover.  I cut them all—over 70 cups of onion!—without crying once.  I think that is my superpower. 😉 (Actually, I think it’s the contacts I wear; when I cut onions while wearing my glasses, I cry like a mere mortal.)

That’s what I weighed on Wednesday morning, after my weekend “off plan.”  I ate and ate and ate all weekend, spaghetti and meatballs, quesadillas, biscuits, biscuits and more biscuits (with jam).  And ice cream, and a brownie sundae at DQ on Friday after raspberry picking.  So I’m actually pretty happy with a one-pound gain.  It could have been a lot worse! I did track everything, and although I was way over my calories every day, I think tracking just subconsciously made me eat less.

And finally…

The finished product!  That’s 36 jars of spaghetti sauce, 37 jars of salsa, 49 ½ pint jars of raspberry jam, and 15 jars of blackberry jam.  I picked almost all of the fruit myself—including over 420 pounds of tomatoes!  Although I ended up with less than last year, I think that I did damn well, and I can assure you, I had the exhaustion to back up that claim. 😉

Thanks for reading!