Everybody CAN CAN

Canning came on to my radar a couple years ago when my mom expressed interest in canning and my dad bought her all the proper supplies as a gift. Those supplies were, unsurprisingly, not used until my dad pickled some green tomatoes, peppers, and the like last year. I thought that looked like a good idea but assumed I'd just kill myself with botulism. Well, I got a garden of my own, some confidence, and tons of vegetables, so this year I decided I was going to can.

I tried a simple pickle recipe first. My friend made pickles for her graduation party, and I was tempted to steal the whole jar. God, they were good, and she was kind enough to lend me her great grandma's recipe. The best part about this recipe was that it didn't require a hot water bath or pressure cooking because they were sun pickles. Yes, kinda like sun tea but a lot more sour and crunchy. I just had to add the right ingredients to a jar, boil up a brine, and voila, sun pickles!

The secret ingredient is the kick from the anaheim pepper...oh and dill because any non-dill pickle fails at life

Sterilizing jars to save lives

I saw a deer approach these one day and about lost it.

The true test for these pickles was to pass my parents' discerning taste buds. My Polack mother and Polack-by-marriage father (Polacks know their pickles!) thought they were wonderful. Now I'm waiting for my cucumber plants to produce another crop so I can start another batch.

These pickles boosted my confidence, so this week I decided to go with something a little more complicated: pasta sauce. My tomato plants are producing slowly (and small-ly) but surely, BUT my in-laws, who are doing container gardening with bat guano fertilizer, have produced tons of beautiful large tomatoes. Since my ma-in-law went out of town, I was gifted with a grocery bag full of homegrown tomatoes. With a couple from my garden and my parents' garden thrown in, I had enough tomatoes to make enough pasta sauce for this winter and beyond.

I found a recipe in the book I mentioned in my last post (Homesweet Homegrown) that basically said to throw together a shoebox's worth of tomatoes, onion, garlic, basil, etc. There were no measurements, so I had fun assuming what a good amount of garlic would be. Besides no measurements, another hiccup I had was that my stove, a horrible flat top electric, is not ideal for canning. I have to use flat-bottomed cookware, and even then, heating large pots of boiling water (for sterilizing) could potentially crack my stovetop. This was almost an irrational dealbreaker when we were looking at this house, but my father-in-law mentioned we could run a gas line to the kitchen some day. I wait for that day....longingly.

Thankfully, my parents let me use their non-flat-bottomed canning pot on their glorious gas stove.

The gas stove in all its glory

Tomatoes stewing, waiting for their immersion blending

Everything popped like it should!

Now I have delicious tomato sauce to get my husband and I through the winter.When the next bumper crop comes through, I may try to make some more sauce or maybe something more exciting, like salsa. My next challenge will be to can something like green beans, but first I need to find a pressure canner since it's not an acidic food.