The annual can

Going to the farmers market in August is overwhelming.  I almost feel compelled to back up a truck and just fill it with everything possible.  The tomatoes, the blueberries, the peaches, the peppers…need I say more?

I have always been enamored with canning.  I started doing it when the kids were young.  We were living in the suburbs and I was a full-time Mom, wife, chief bottle washer, entertainment planner for the family, meal planner, decorator, etc.  To keep myself entertained I would take the kids on farm trips and we would then come home and can whatever we had picked for the future.  There is nothing like opening up a jar of jam or a bottle of crushed tomatoes in January that were canned in August.  If you close your eyes, the smell, the taste, the texture takes you back to summer.

So I went on a canning craze this past week.  Blueberry Jelly.  I think I caught the last week of blueberries.

Peach Jelly.  Lesson learned here.  This tastes amazing but next year I am going to crush or chop the peaches into a mash before making the jam.  It will be more about the peaches and less about the sugar.

Tomato, basil and salt.  That’s it.  What was left was a serious amount of tomato liquid after boiling this down.  I canned that too.  Better my tomato liquid then something canned from the grocery store.

I also make some pickled peppers.  The peppers are different yellows and red.  It was a success.  I tried one bottle before I made a huge batch.

I emailed my friend to show her my wares.  She loves to can.  Her note back to me said “oh..hello fellow crazy person”.  There is something insanely cathartic about the entire activity as I am pretty sure that we do not eat 18 jams of blueberry jam over the course of the year.  Did I mention that I made tomato jam too?