Canning

We've had a good garden this year - and my neighbors were so great to take care of it while we were out of town.

So, since I've been back from our trip, I have been learning how to can a couple of different things.

My mom canned many things while I was growing up, so I was able to watch her and Giselle, Mom and I canned some applesauce in the summer of 2000, but I've never done it myself.  I was a little nervous and kept worrying about so many details, but found this site: http://www.pickyourown.org/
that was immensely helpful.  After going to it for canning salsa and pears, I realized that it was also the website I went to two years ago to find a place to pick grapes and raspberries for an awesome price (it has pick your own gardens and orchards listed by state).

Some things I learned about canning salsa: take the skin off the tomatoes first (it's amazingly easy) and make sure you cook everything - I forgot to cook the hot peppers for Nate's spicy batch and now it has to sit in the fridge so it won't go bad.

Some things I learned about canning applesauce: don't forget that you have an apple-peeler-corer-slicer!  I have not one but two and forgot to use either of them!  My mom also let me have her applesauce machine which I left at my in-laws.  Luckily, I found a great recipe for one made in the crockpot - it ended up being the best tasting applesauce!    (I'm pretty sure it was this recipe but ack that I can't remember!)

Some things I learned about canning pears:  Actually I learned a ton about canning pears:

1. pick your pears while they are still green - you don't want to wait until they turn yellow and are ripe, ready to eat
2. wrap them individually in paper and stick them in a paper sack to ripen a little (I did it for about 5 days, which was probably a little too long)
3. after they are still a little firm but a little soft start peeling them...well, I suppose you could leave the skin on, but I wanted pears like out of a can - yum!
4. I didn't put them in lemon juice or any type of color preserver, so I'm not sure how that would look but it'd probably look better than my browning pears
5. you can put them in water or apple juice, but my understanding is that they won't last as long so I did a very light syrup recipe and heat packed them
6. the last thing I learned about pears was that if you don't cover them with fluid, they really will turn dark brown and ugly looking - but apparently they will still taste good - I don't know since I have been saving that pear jar for an emergency.  ;-)

APPLES

Soak the apples - not sure why really, my mom always did it.

Elise helping to mash the apples after they were cooked.

 TOMATOES

Sanitize all the jars and lids - with the pears, I put them in the dishwasher which was much easier.

Our second batch in which we took the skin off the tomatoes.

 PEARS