A Little Progress on the Canning Front.

This is what I had made as of Tuesday night, aka, very little headway. I had gotten through all of the tomatillos, about 10 lbs. of pears, and 4 beefsteak tomatoes from my neighbor's garden that had been in my fridge and were about to expire. That leaves me with 15 lbs. of pears and 25 lbs. of apples, not to mention the tomatoes I picked up yesterday, but we'll get to that later. Have I mentioned we have company coming this weekend and I still need to pick up the house and do laundry? I think I might be a little crazy. 

So, I used the tomatillos to make salsa verde. If you're interested, I based my recipe off of this one from Doris and Jilly Cook. They discuss both the pressure canning and water bath canning routes. I went ahead and water bath canned my salsa, since my water bath canner is already out due to having a zillion pounds of fruit in my kitchen. Because tomatillos are closely related to tomatoes, it is only safe to water bath can them (and any kind of tomato) if you add acid to your recipe. In the recipe she suggests lime juice but I went ahead with a suggestion from one of the canning books I own (Put 'Em Up!) and used vinegar instead. I also used more jalapenos than was probably necessary but Jake wanted it spicy spicy. It turned out to be amazing. I tried to can the salsa in smaller jars to have around to use for just one or two servings, rather than a giant jar that will take up space in my fridge once it's opened. 

Next I went ahead and made pear "jam". Pears are incredibly easy to work with and they taste so good. I used the recipe for pear jam that comes in the pectin box. The only change I made is that I added a tiny bit of cinnamon. The jam didn't firm up as much as I wanted it to. I considered reprocessing the jam to get a better set but decided against it. Right now the consistency is somewhere between syrup and jam and will be perfect for pancakes and waffles.

Since I already had the canner out and full of water, I decided to do something with tomatoes a neighbor had dropped by. She had given us some nice big beefsteak tomatoes and I had 3 left, that were way past the point of me chopping them up for a salad. I added a nice big yellow tomato from my garden and got to work. I decided to make a basic plain tomato sauce because it's easy and versatile. I used small jars for this recipe as well because Jake doesn't like tomato sauce so I'm the only one eating it.

So, you'd think I'd be slowly working through all of that fruit I bought, right? Wrong. I had to go to Boise today to get fingerprinted for my new job and on the way back decided to stop at the Blue Barn. I had seen them advertising on craigslist so I decided to check it out. It's located in Caldwell, Idaho and isn't it beautiful? The flowers are stunning. They not only sell a wide variety of locally grown produce but they also carry pies that looked amazing and locally canned jams. I was exhausted and in a hurry so I didn't poke around as much as I would've liked but I'm sure I'll be back.

While at the Blue Barn I picked up a box of tomatoes, 25 lbs. of them to be exact. I think I'm going to can some whole, make some more sauce, and maybe roast and freeze a few. Marisa has a lot of great instructions over on Food in Jars on what to do with your tomato bounty.

My plan for today is to can, can, can, with some cleaning and laundry on the side. I feel exhausted just thinking about it.