Monday, August 17, 2009

Things to do when it's hot...

Canning all day is probably not up there on the list, but it's what I did on Friday.

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The produce has exploded in the garden and I've reached the point of stopping strangers on their evening walks to load them up with zucchini. The heat and sun from last week has finally encouraged the tomatoes to start turning. I have several ripe tomatoes waiting for me at home. I've already shredded and baked a batch of double chocolate zucchini cookies, 2 loaves of zucchini bread and 4 freezer bags of shredded zucchini ready for more baking.

I focused on green beans, cucumbers and zucchinis for the initial canning.

I made Thai green beans (recipe in my co-op newsletter), Dill Zucchini chips (from Cooking Alaskan) and Dill pickles from Grandma Alice's recipe. She canned her dill pickles whole, but my cucumbers were so massive there was no way.

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I installed shelves in the utility room and moved all of my food storage downstairs when the lids popped. The basement is looking like a proper MN basement. At least I know we have food to keep us set for the winter.

This week is beets and melons.

2 comments:

Sarah O G said...

Do you have a dehydrator? If not, its something to investigate. We take zucchini and tomatoes and dehydrate them and put them in the freezer and then add them to tomato sauces and chili and the like. They have a little different flavor that is really nice and subtle for those that say they dont like those types of veggies.

We're thinking of doing some canning this fall with food from farmer's markets. What type of canning do you do?

Anonymous said...

Perfect timing since you clearly know what you're doing and I do NOT!

Ok, so did my first ever pickles yesterday. They're floating a bit and I'm worried that the tops won't be submerged. Is that going to hurt anything??

:)