Haha. Definitely. Sometimes that’s all I eat for lunch, chips and salsa.
Here is some duded up jars of homemade applesauce and apple butter my wife and daughter did that I am going to take to some clients. She ordered some labels online for the jar tops and printed my company name on them (pretty cool and cheap!). I think the clients will like them better than the standard christmas junk food that people tend to give.
5 Likes
Very clever and stylish. I’m sure your clients will appreciate them more.
Just curious, what kind of apples did you use for the sauce? We have a lot of apples that might need to be made sauce. We already have lots of canned apple butter, and just cubed apples.
Holy cow! I was raised on Cream of Wheat and when we moved south, I couldn’t get enough grits…a perfect butter conveyor. Corn doesn’t do me well anymore so I was excited to find millet grits and like them even better.
I’ve seen Duke’s mayo. Gotta read the label and try it. I’m pretty choosy about which cults I follow, LOL.
1 Like
I grow veg and fruit for fresh eating year round, the only thing I put up are olives:
I’ve given away two to three 1/2 gallons this year, with two more gallons in my fridge.
4 Likes
Kraut!!!
Just harvested 2 head of cabbage. Put one to this yesterday and one will be for slaw for Christmas dinner.
I have one sacrificial head outside under poly to see how much cold this variety can take. Growing cabbage through the winter is MUCH less work.
5 Likes
@JustAnne4,
Would love to see a thread just on growing cabbage and making Kraut. My sister is good at that stuff and I don’t know much about it. Would love to grow a 100’ row of cabbage in late summer - Jan or Feb and make 5 gallons of Kraut at a time! How cold do the poly tunnels allow you to get? My guess is a outside temperature 0 - -10F.
1 Like
Wow Clark, that’s a lot of cabbage!! …and a lot of kraut.
IMHO it is easier to make small batches as you need it - of course, unless you plan to sell it, LOL.
The pic above is one head. Simply shred the cabbage (I like small shredded pieces, some folks like thin slices, the former is done faster than the latter) Save 1-2 outer leaves to cover the cabbage with.
Tare a bowl and weigh the shredded cabbage. Add 1.5 tsp canning salt per #, mix well and allow to sweat for ~ 20 minutes. This should produce enough brine to cover. Pack mixture into a jar and pound down just to remove air pockets and get liquid on top. Place reserved leaves on top and press around jar edges to keep slaw under water as shown above. Kraut is anaerobic. I use glass pucks as weights too. Set aside anywhere from 3 days to 3 weeks depending on how mild/crunchy vs. sour/soft you like your kraut. If you aren’t sure, just unpack and taste, then repack to desired doneness. I used the bubbler shown to reduce the smell of any aerobic fermentation. Any mold on top can be disgarded and won’t hurt the final product.
Such lacto-fermented products are so good for digestion. I’ve also done kohlrabi this way with good results.
Edit: Whoops…about growing over winter. According to Elliot Coleman a simple polytunnel gains you 1 growing zone, say from 6a to 7a, and adding rowcover under the poly gains you another zone. I have one head under simple poly and will see what it can take. I’ve grown kohlrabi through our winters w/o any problems. We’ll see. 
1 Like
Some before and after pics of our corn I canned last night. Fifteen pints of Honey Select.
Some tomatoes we canned last weekend.
For the season so far, we’ve canned-
33qt green beans
7qt diced tomatoes
10pt salsa
15pt sweet corn
Hoping to get a few more beans done before they get too stringy, plus we should get another harvest of tomatoes.
We also picked quite a few pumpkins last week, with more to harvest. Probably will can those soon, or maybe make some puree.
The cat is guarding them. Or wants some kibble.
5 Likes
I just started canning for the first time this year! Glad this thread was resurrected; lots of good information. I have a ceramic top electric stove which is apparently not safe to do pressure canning on, so we bought a Presto electric canner and I was thrilled to be able to “put up” some green beans this year. Here is some apricot pepper jelly (recipe from the Ball Book).
5 Likes
Okra… canned for frying.
And a Quart of dried and vac/sealed mockernut hickory nuts.
Tomatoes frozen in wide mouth pints…
Okra oven blanched… vac sealed frozen.
Frozen berries and low sugar chia jam.
4 Likes
Another 14 quarts of tomatoes, I picked about 45lb worth this morning and finished water bathing the last batch about 6pm.
My wife made some mixed veggie pickles yesterday. Mostly zucchini, cukes and a few green tomatoes from the garden along with some cauliflower and red onions we got from a food pantry. Ended up with 12 quarts of those, 4 were regular pickled, 8 bread and butter style.
We’ve done a lot of canning this year. Probably about done with it. Green beans are played out, but we still have some tomatoes left.
6 Likes
Haven’t gotten around to canning anything yet… and that will probably only be a few jars of pickled jalapenos and hot pepper jelly.
But, since I planted almost 100 pepper plants this year, I’ve got 'em running out of my ears. Have been chopping sweet peppers (bell, banana, Ajvarski, Stocky Red Roaster, etc.) and running them through the dehydrator. Small jar at right is pure Habanada
6 Likes
Here’s one to go with that thread where the poster was looking for apples that taste like Jolly Rancher candy…
6 Likes
Good one. Were those water bathed or pressure canned?? 
I had a bushel basket of maters that weren’t processed Saturday, so I picked another 15 lb yesterday and spent most of the day processing them. Ended up with 12 quarts, didn’t finish until midnight.
I think we’ve canned a total 37qt of just tomatoes, 20 pints of salsa, and a few pints of juice.
My wife did 9 pints of sweet brine cauliflower and 3 pints of onions Sunday.
I think we are officially done canning for the year. All this canning has put us behind on other chores. Trying to catch up on laundry today.
We canned some cucumber relish and salsa over the weekend. Only about 5 pints each as we got a lot planted late this year, but this will be my first winter having something canned from the garden to eat so I’m thrilled.
1 Like
Congrats. It’s very satisfying to be able to grow, eat and preserve your own food, isn’t it? We’ve been doing it for 8 years now, always grateful to be able to store some food away, especially during these times. It brings some summer to the cold months when you can open a jar of fresh tomatoes, beans, pickles, relish, fruit, or whatever.
1 Like
Thanks! Its been very rewarding to go to my backyard “grocery store.” I love to grow things and growing things I can eat? Wow, doubly rewarding. Looking forward to visiting the pantry “grocery store” this winter 
1 Like
Well, just when I thought we were done with tomatoes, we had a bunch more ripen this week. So my wife picked two basketfuls this morning of about 50lb total. We got 13 quarts out of them, which makes about 45qt out of about 245lb overall this year, along with 20 pints of salsa. I think I can say we won’t be canning anything else, even tho there’s more on the vines. Some of the 37 plants didn’t produce hardly any, so we got most of those 245lb from 30-32 plants.
1 Like
I put a vid on our Facebook page using the Victorio food mill with the salsa attachment. It’s much quicker than blanching, skinning, coring, and running it through a food processor, because it does it all in one step.
However it isn’t able to make as chunky salsa as a food processor. The onions and peppers have to be run through a food processor, so they can be made chunky, but the food mill won’t make the tomatoes as chunky. Still, it saves a ton of time.
We made 21 quarts of salsa this weekend and skimmed off 2 gal of tomato juice. The juice is excellent.
Here is the vid. You should be able to just click on the link.
4 Likes