Canning Season Wrap Up

Canning Season began this year with grapes from my yard.

And before they were in my yard, they were in Amara's yard.

thanks for the grapevine start.

I had no idea that I had this many grapes.  They filled up my small sink two times.

I read up on juicing grapes and found that you end up with a much sweeter grape juice if you take off the stems, although you can just throw them into the juicer with stems and all.

I had no idea what was going to come out of the juicer.  But, I love the color of this grape juice...

It looks so pretty sitting on the counter and now down on the shelf in the storage room.

Next up was the purple grapes.  The kids are thrilled to have some of this grape juice.

These were from Orem.  Thanks for picking the grapes for me.

Needless to say, I am running low on quart jars.

If anyone has extras, I'd be glad to take them off your hands...

Then, this guy became a regular on feature in the kitchen.

Along with a bunch of canning books.

This is a sample of the pizza sauce and Southwest Tomato soup.

Another shot of the Southwest Tomato Soup.  I hope it's good.

The tomatoes and peppers were from my yard.

You can also see the new lids that I am trying out.

They are called Tattler lids and they are reusable.

Then Rick helped me can 80 pounds of chicken.

Bean soup.  The little green beens are from Amara, if you can see any of them!

The kids didn't really like the beans.  

That's OK.  I'm not a big bean fan.  But, Summer said she would eat the beans if the Zombies ever come.

The list of canned items also includes raspberry jalapeno jelly that I made from my jalapenos and raspberries from my neighbor Laura.  

I managed to make some salsa this year that the family approves of.  

I made tomato vegetable soup that I thought was fantastic because I love tomatoes.

Cole just ate the potatoes and left the rest.  

I had tons of tomatoes this year, so I did a double batch of the vegetable tomato soup.  I hope someone helps me eat it.

And then I canned a bunch of tomatoes by themselves.

I roasted a lot of peppers that Phyllis brought me.  

I am her VT.  She grows a fantastic garden every year.

I also froze a bunch of peaches.  They were from the tree that hangs over my fence from my neighbors back yard.  I figure that when the neighbors just let the fruit fall on the ground and rot, then the fruit that is on my side of the fence is fair game.  But, I didn't have time to bottle it, so it went into the freezer.

And I managed to grow lots and lots of peans, radishes, turnips, one cabbage, and 2 pumpkins.

And one last trick I learned this year:  We have really hard water here.  So, if you add 1/2 c. vinegar to the water bath or pressure canner, it will help the jars to not get the white film on the outside when they come out of the canner and dry.  I tried it with the last batch in the pressure canner and it worker great.  Although the kids thought the house smelled horrible for a couple of days.  too bad.