It doesn’t feel like Fall today, and yet today it officially begins. The temperature is suppose to climb to the 90’s this afternoon and yet I get an unexplainable itch every year at this time to stock my cupboards and prepare for old man winter.
To date, my cupboards are stocked with the following:
- 10 quarts marinara sauce
- 2 quarts canned tomatoes
- 8 pints blackberry preserves
- 2 pints raspberry preserves
- 10 pints pear-ginger preserves
- 3 pints asian pear chutney
- 2 quarts peaches
- 2 quarts break & butter pickles
- 1 quart honey vinegar carrots
- 10 pints zucchini relish
- 1 ziplock bag frozen roasted red peppers
- 1 ziplock dehydrated tomatoes
- 1 ziplock dehydrated zucchini
Despite this list, I feel like I haven’t really “seriously” started to preserve for winter. I have put up small batches here and there this summer when there was enough to justify a small canning and it has all added up. There is so much produce left before winter really sets in – it’s time to get serious.
My plan is to take advantage of more peaches, tomatoes, green beans, and corn that are still in season. I want to experiment with salsa, pie filling, a pickled veggie medley, etc. Some day I hope to own a pressure canner, which means I could can all kinds of vegetables without worrying about the acid content, but today is not that day. So I am looking for ideas on useful water-bath canner recipes to keep me warm this winter.
Have any great ideas? What is your pantry filled with? What has been your favorite wintertime treat from the pantry?
My afternoon is being spent canning our apple bounty here in Vermont. I’m putting up plain, raspberry and strawberry apple sauces and canned apple slices for pies and other winter treats.
Do you have any experience canning pumpkin? I want to try pumpkin puree, but know that it’s advised against because of the density.
Mmm… raspberry-apple sauce. That sounds soooo good. I have not canned pumpkin butter, or puree, because indeed the acid content is not high enough. I froze puree last year though and it worked great. Just freeze in small sandwich bags, so it’s close to the size you will need in recipes for breads, etc.
We’ve had a good summer of canning and we probably have some 35 quarts of green beans, 45 quarts of various tomato things, several huge ziplock bags of frozen tomatoes, 30 quarts or so of pickles (bread and butter, dill, and russian which are the best b/c they include garlic and cayenne peppers), around 5 quarts of sliced peaches, 3 or 4 quarts of peach butter, and then a whole slew of maybe 15 quarts of various pickled things like eggs, garlic, peppers, and okra. We had a nice harvest of garlic earlier this summer with maybe 100 decent sized bulbs. The butternut squash was pulled about 3 weeks ago and it has nicely cured so we’re enjoying that now. We had 20′ of butternut and we got a decent yield of maybe 50lbs total. Considering the local farmers are selling butternuts for $6-8 apiece our tiny $2 seed costs reaped us big savings.
This was our first year with the pressure canner and it’s been awesome. We got a standard 23qt Presto canner and the total cost was around $100 with the weight system (instead of the gauge) from Amazon. We’re currently working on some sauerkraut and apple butter.
We’re in zone 6A or 7 here in SE TN so the peaches are gone but the good dessert apples still await. Our gardens are smallish, maybe 900 sq ft total, but they’ve been fairly productive this year. This was really our first year of intensive gardening and most of our beds were in the initial year. We had plenty of failures like the squash, zucchini, and pretty much everything for this Fall and Winter, but we’re determined to get things in full swing next year. We’ll plant garlic again in mid October and that’s always fun.
My wife and I petitioned our small town and ended up changing the chicken laws. We have 6 hens now and they’re all about to start laying so that should be good for the winter. We have 2 leghorns, 1 buff orpington, 1 white brahma cochin, 1 white rock, and 1 rhode island red. The white brahma is our biggest and prettiest and she’s already laying consistently. Other than that we’ve got some major tree work and cleanup to do this winter.
Best of luck for the rest of the Fall,
Great fortune stumbling upon your blog…love it! I’ve put forth an effort this year for my pantry as well:
* 40 lbs of San Marzano tomatoes created: 6 quarts chopped, 2 quarts halved, 1 quart ketchup, 1 pint salsa, gallon bag of frozen whole, 4 quarts of sauces, and of course tomato soup, gazpacho, and lots of caprese salad!
* 20 lbs of strawberries: half frozen, half jam
* 6 loaves zucchini bread, frozen
* 6 quarts pears
* 6 quarts peaches
* 3 quarts marinated roasted bell peppers
* 2 pints pear preserves
* 4 pints blueberry jelly
* 4 pints blackberry jelly
* 4 pints of dried herbs (oregano, thyme, basil, parsley)
And like you, I have so much more to do! Next weekend is apple harvest and applesauce making. I volunteer with the Portland Fruit Tree Project where we rescue fruit that would otherwise go to waste on neighborhood trees, and donate to the Oregon Food Bank. The perks? Volunteers get half the crop. So it was a great way to get my pears and apples this year!
Thanks for bringing a real perspective to the urban gardener / preserver life – you rock!