Canning Lessons

Last summer I learned how to can. I've been saying for years that I'd like to learn. It's this whole foreign, new thing to me, not having grown up around canning, like many of my friends. Plus, we have 2 apples trees and a pear tree (oh and the plum tree, which is struggling), and it's a total shame that most of their fruit rots on the ground each year.

I never would have actually gotten around to learning it if it hadn't been for two stellar friends. One let me come over and help her can peaches. The other brought me her extra steam canner and 14 bottles, with rims, enough for 2 batches of whatever I wanted to do. She and her kids also helped us pick the pear and apple trees clean. I had tomatoes from the garden bed by the front door, so I was good to go!
I learned a couple of things.

Canning is easy, it just takes a LOT OF TIME!



Everything was easy except for green tomatoes, they're not easy to skin. Red tomatoes just get a dip in boiling water and the skins peel or fall right off. Green tomatoes hold onto their skin. It's like they're saying they're not ready yet. I spent by far the most time making green salsa, because of those dang skins. And I don't even like it that much.

A melon-baller is perfect for coring pears. Slick as snot.


When you adapt an apple pie filling recipe to the amount of apples that you actually have, calculate the amount of sure-jel the most carefully! Or you'll end up with apple jello, rather than goopy pie filling.

Next summer I want to grow tons more tomatoes. We use a lot of store-canned tomatoes, and I wonder if it would be worth the effort to grow and can more of our own. I'm also going to do more apples, for sure.