Adventures in Canning

This past weekend for the first time ever, I canned! And I actually enjoyed it!

I got two bushels of tomato's and canned them. I have 12 quart jars full of tomato's! and 3 quarts of tomato sauce that I will use for pizza or pasta.

One thing I learned in my adventure, when peeling and coring the tomato's ( I did not removed the seeds, just the core and skins) Once you carve a X into the bottom of the tomato drop it in hot water to peel the skin, this takes like 30 secs if that.

Core the tomato first before taking the skin off...its a WHOLE LOT easier than skinning and then coring because the tomato's are very very slippery, not something I had really thought of before. Core and then skinning made it a lot easier than the other way around.

Next up I think I might try to make grape jelly. Did you know that jelly is like 4 lbs of fruit and like 7 cups of sugar!! HOLY COW! That's a lot of sugar!!

In our back yard we have a 2 pear trees, 2 cherry trees and a grape vine. Our pear trees have never really produced eatable fruit, except for the groundhogs who love to eat their breakfast from my tree, but they are very bitter or totally destroyed by the bugs. So we picked them all and hubs is going to trim the tree again and hopefully next year I might have some pears to add to my list of canned goods from my own homestead.