Remember last post when I said "I might be canning tomorrow"? Boy was that an understatement! Holy smokes. It the last 48 hours Gwen and I canned 43 1/2 quarts of jams, applesauce, dilly beans pie filling, and quince thingy. It was amazing! Once I figure out how to post pictures, I show you the madness.
It all started very innocently. Gwen sent me a message Friday night, "what are you doing tomorrow, I'm thinking of canning some jams" "Oh fun" I said. We meant at her dad's house at 1 Saturday afternoon. I had a 5 gallon bucket of apples from my backyard, a canning pot and some jars and lids. Oh and some dill, and pickling stuff from dilled(dilly) green beans. Manageable for an afternoon of football watching and canning. Gwen went to the upright freezer in the garage to pull out her fruit. Bag upon bag came out. Raspberries, Strawberries, Quince, Peaches, Blackberries, Blueberries. Loads! Probably 5 gallon bags and several smaller bags, filled with fruit. Oh my gosh!
She bought a new spiffy hand-crank apple peeler, that although took half a bucket of apple to figure out how to make it work, was AWESOME, and I plan on rarely hand-peeling an apple ever again! Peeling, coring, slicing and dicing the apples took over two hours, so by the time we got to the actual canning part it was almost 4. We started canning applesauce, and dilly beans first. Two giant pots for water baths, helped the process move along quickly, but it was still a juggling act to get all the pots in all the right places :) We made applesauce and stuff green beans into sterilizing jars. It was fun, and we had to be quick, The jars were hot, but we found out I'm indifferent to heat *grin*. Into the water bath they went. I can't remember what came next, probably more dilly beans and applesauce.
Some awesome brandied cherries was after that in the bath, and much to my surprise the jam came together extremely quickly. Gwen loved it, and if we hadn't had so much she would have happily eaten the entire pot! We had been canned now for several hours and and still had apple pie filling to can. Normally, I would have just waited until the next day, but we had gotten a head of ourselves earlier and already had the apples peeled, cored, and sliced. So we braved the late night, and quickly hot packed filling.
I was toast by now and it was after midnight. We had close to 30 quarts and I couldn't go on. I don't think Gwen could either, she was tired and all the football games were over.
The next day we got an earlier start. We were still there for 5 hours, but a chunk of that time was dedicated to making the kitchen look like a kitchen again instead of a horror film set. The jam had boiled over yesterday so we spent the first hour cleaning the stove top. That sucked, and I hope to never use a S.O.S. pad again. Our strawberry jam gave us more issues, but use we got it right, boy did it taste good! I can't wait to have it on my morning toast.
Mixed berry jam came next, and the taste was AMAZING! You can taste each of the different fruits, and it's a gorgeous color. This will be good over pancakes, french toast, ice cream, the list goes on.
Sorry for such a long post, but it was a long weekend. Totally worth it, and I can't wait to try my hand at canning other things. Maybe more veggies, and not so many apples, but it all depends on what next season brings me.
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