Canning season

[a...@windandsun.com]

After three months of fairly regular use, I have finally washed my 7
quart pressure canner for the last time and set it on the basement
shelf where it will stay until strawberry jam season begins next
summer. (We use the canner for boiling water bath processing as well
as pressure canning.) The last produce I processed were green
tomatoes which became chutney and “mincemeat”. (Thanks for the
recipes, Judy and Kathy!) We’ve processed strawberry, cherry, and
raspberry jams and sauces, green beans and yellow wax beans,
hamburger, tomato, and celery soups. Our tomatoes turned into salsa,
pizza sauce, spaghetti sauce, tomato juice, whole tomatoes, and
crushed tomatoes. We have grape, cherry, and tomato juices, apple and
pear sauces. Local foods supporters, Rick & Stella and Trudy provided
dill pickles and “V7” juice. And even though the tart cherry supply
was not good for commercial production this year, we were able to
glean enough from Zeke’s orchard to put up a supply of cherries for
seven pies (sweetened with local honey).

In the freezer we have asparagus, Brussels sprouts, broccoli,
cauliflower, peas, Door County kraut, Malvitz chickens, local beef,
rhubarb, strawberries, raspberries, goat milk, and pumpkin puree.

Dried herbs include parsley, thyme, sage, mint, oregano, lemon balm,
lemon grass, four types of basil. We have also dehydrated tomatoes,
peppers, and apples.

In the “root cellar” (aka basement) there are Roder’s potatoes,
Sully’s squashes, and Zeke’s apples. From our own garden we have
stored turnips, beets, carrots, and kohlrabi.

Preserving food is gratifying albeit time consuming activity. Sally
arranged all our filled jars on shelves in the basement. It looks
very colorful and evokes a satisfying feeling of bounty.

Ann