Twice as much fun

I have been having so much fun canning lately, but yesterday with my mom it was the best. Not only did we get a serious amount of canning done, but it was so much fun working with her!






1. I brought so much stuff over! We powered through a lot of the goodness from the farmer’s market and our CSA box. Yet we still had to make a trip to the store (and Tuesday and I made two before we came over). It’s official I will never have enough sugar, vinegar, or onions.
2. Apples quartered for apple butter. My first time trying this and it was great (but really with five cups of sugar I was pretty certain it would be).
3. Came up with this: use a steamer basket for lids if you don’t have enough burners to prep them. It worked great. What did not work great was putting vinegar in the water bath. I had read that kept the jars really clean and decided to try it. Result? Our “vintage” canning rack rusted up and the water turned so gross!
4. Bill comes home to our madness.
5. And we had roasted tomatoes going in the oven all day.
6. Some results. Clockwise from left: Carrot Pepper Salsa, Ripe Tomato Chutney, Apple Butter (classic), Tomatillo Salsa, Plum Jam, Green Tomato Chutney, Plum Chutney.

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76 Comments

  1. I’m so glad you tried the plum jam. And I love seeing all the other jars filled with such a great variety of foods! The steamer basket idea is great!

  2. If you have a dishwasher with a plate warming feature – you can stash your clean jars and rings in there while you are prepping everything else. 🙂 And for the lids I would just put them in a glass or metal bowl (clean) and pour just off the boil water from our electric tea kettle.
    *grin* Those are my tips & tricks from living and working in a kitchen that is barely 10×10.

  3. Awesome and agree with the sugar/vinegar comment. We are on our third GALLON of vinegar. Holy crap. The vinegar in the water trick worked for me – just a quick splash in my 16 quart pot and my jars turned out great.

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