This year's canning projects...

Well, it's been a busy couple of months, taking advantage of produce sales and the local Saturday farmer's market, putting up for winter; and since I had to re-plant this year's garden two or three times (depending on the veggie) with our crazy start to the growing season, I didn't want to take chances by waiting for the garden to be ready for harvest for most of my kitchen projects (though we should still have a good bit to put up in the freezers when it's all done growing for the year).  Anyway, I made good use of the canner this year - and just because I love to be able to look back each year and see my "canning harvest", I took a picture!

We have sweet pickles, dill pickles, marinara sauce, salsa, cranberry sauce, raspberry cranberry sauce, apple-walnut cranberry sauce, apricot jam, raspberry jam, blackberry jam, strawberry jam, gooseberry  jam, rhubarb jelly, spiced apple butter, apple sauce, pear butter, peaches, cherries, pearsauce, and 200 pounds of canned pears! 

For lack of an actual canning closet or kitchen cabinets, we have improvised and use these panty cabinets that we bought a few years ago at Target - it works :)  though some day I dream of having floor to ceiling cupboards along the window wall (leaving the windows uncovered of course!) - for right now, these work just fine, though, and if we did have the floor to ceiling cupboards, I doubtless would not be able to get those lower shelves at this point anyway, being so huge with our not-so-little baby growing within! :)

So the goal was to complete my canning to-do-list before baby-time - which usually falls around week 36.  We're at week 32 and I just finished the pickles this weekend, completing my list (and filling all of my available space!) which means I'm done...  at least for now ;)  After baby is here, and the garden is finally ready to harvest, there will be more freezing to be done - in the meanwhile, I'm thankful for a few weeks off! :)

What to do with those weeks, you ask?  Ha - never fear...  with 8 (soon to be 9) children, we are NEVER lacking for things to do!  This week my three oldest are finishing up everything needed for their 4-H submissions for the state fair.  Interview judging is in a few days, so they are down to the final project-scramble.  Once that is allllll done, we're all taking a week off of projects and just enjoying a few days of NO PROJECTS (**gasp**) - then I'm sure we'll find more to occupy ourselves!  That and finishing up our summer school term (7 weeks total so that we have a head start - and so that after our newest little guy joins the family, we can take a month off and still be a little bit ahead of the game!) 

Now, to stick to that "few days of no projects" idea...  is that really and truly possible?  We shall see...

Preparing ahead...

As summer is here, gardens are blooming and growing, farmer's market is teeming with activity and fresh produce, and my belly is quickly expanding (oh my!!!) I'm working to get much of my canning done and get the freezer fully stocked so that it is ready for those initial days/weeks after our newest little one is born.  It's a good feeling to see the canning cupboards fill with home canned foods for my family, and to see the freezer filling...  of course, we are also still using some of the things going in to the freezer, so it's a process of making, using, and making again, haha - but I'm really looking forward to having it *filled* and ready for those few weeks that I'm not as active as normal and to have the ability to pull a homemade meal from the freezer in the morning to thaw and cook/ serve in the evening!

For canning, I'm still working on it...  waiting for some things to come in to season...  I cheated and used store-bought tomatos for my marinara sauce, though - so I have four large batches of marinara canned and ready...  not making salsa this year since we still have a good amount left from last year...  pickling cucmbers should be ready in a couple more weeks, and then I can get dill pickles (last year was my trial run on that one - it was a success, so I'm repeating it this year!) and sweet pickles (my "new thing" to try for this year) canned and done...  jams and jellies galore, cranberry sauce (again, I cheated and used some that I had frozen last year when they were on a good sale, so I don't need to buy or make more this year, which is nice! We have just over 200 pounds of pears canned - most are just peeled and sliced and canned, some I made into pear sauce and pear butter, though, too.  Still waiting for peaches and cherries to come into season - cherries are doing better - of course, I buy these at the store since we don't have cherry trees out here, and apples for making more apple butter and apple sauce for my sweet-toothed husband. :)  The kids are all allergic to apples and peaches, so I only can those for my husband and myself, so those are not done in the large quantities that I do most everything else, which makes those batches faster and fairly easy to accomplish.

Freezing: I made a batch of 5 coffee cakes this morning - one is in the oven now for today's breakfast, the other four are in the freezer for later...  I made a batch of scones the other day - I need to make another so that we have 4 or 5 breakfast meals of those...  we have several pans of muffins in, but again, I need to make another big batch so that we have more than just two kinds in the freezer for more variety :)  Of course banana bread, zuchinni bread (working on that one later today), pumpkin bread, pizza crust, pie crust, and some casseroles still need doing...  I have 3 pans of lasagne and 4 pans of chicken-broccoli casserole frozen from last week's cook-ahead sessions...  perhaps I'll put together more enchiladas as well...  Of course we have our stockpile of pork from the pigs we butchered this year, and I've prepared and frozen in baggies papaya and strawberries for smoothies - adding blueberries in some bags for a little variety.  We have between 70 and 80 bags of that put in the freezer (I lose count when we use some and freeze more - those fresh, 100% fruit smoothies are such a refreshing treat on these hot summer days!!!), and as they come into season (and better prices!) I hope to freeze more blueberries and strawberries for pies and what not, and am watching my rhubarb plants in the garden, waiting for a good harvest to add to our collection of frozen produce! :)

With our children's wide variety of food allergies and sensitivities it makes life soooo much easier to plan and prepare ahead - not to mention less expensive!

I'm thinking I need to go through recipe books and get some new ideas for freezer meals - main courses anyway, side dishes are usually freshly prepared rice a fruit and/ or veggie dish, and sometimes a dessert.  Hmmm...  chocolate cake freezes well...  ;)  at least, if you freeze it as dough and don't bake it first - makes for a funny texture if you bake *then* freeze it.  Cookie dough is also an easy favorite - so when we make a batch of cookies, I'll usually triple the recipe and bake a quarter or a third of it and freeze the rest into little cookie balls for later use and convenience.

Hmmm...  time to get back to work! :)