Lots and Lots of Canning

Oh, I just love this time of year! My vegetables in the garden are all ripening, though this year with all the wedding preparations I have neglected the garden and it is in a sorry state! But the veggies are still growing. We enjoyed the earlier things like radishes, carrots, beans, lettus and spinach and now the latter things are ready, squash, turnip, bell peppers and hot peppers. Also all the locally grown produce is ready and in the farmers market. That's where I go to get most of the veggies for my canning, though I do use some of the ones from my garden too. So I have been very busy canning away, and ignoring wedding things I probably should be doing!

This pictures just show a few things I left out to give away, I have already put everything else away. I have made jam, relish, peach salsa, vegetable salsa and sweet dill pickles. The pickles are from my Smelly Man's grandma's recipe and they are the best pickles I have ever had! I still have much more canning to do but it may have to wait until after the wedding which is a week from this Saturday. I think there is nothing better than having food that is homemade and it taste better! For example, I always hated relish, I only made it because my Stinky Man likes it, but when I actually tried the homemade stuff I thought it was great! It tastes nothing like the store bought stuff. People always tell me that they love home canned goods but they just don't have the time to do that sort of thing. Well, I may not have kids but I do work full time and we have a farm and I find time to do it. I think a big difference is that around here the TV almost never gets turned on before 7pm on a week night, and I will take my Saturday or Sunday and spend a good portion of the day canning. Sometimes if I am pressed for time I spread it out over a couple days, I will prepare all the fruits or veggies one day and do the cooking and canning the next so it cuts the amount of time I am spending on it in one day in half.

The other day when I was canning I ran out of onions, sugar and vinegar so I ran into town to pick these things up and I was not happy to see that the red onions were imported! The yellow onions were Ontario, but we grow red onions here too! I am always really upset at the grocery store by the lack of Ontario, or at least Canadian produce. I realize there are plenty of things we can't grow here like sugar, coffee, and all that, but I think that if you can get it locally, where every you happen to live, you should. I have started stopping at an orchard on my way home from work to get apples because at the grocery store they too are about 95% imported! The only apples I could find at the local grocery store that were not imported were empire which personally I think are only good pie apples, not good eating apples. And I will admit that some grocery stores are better than other for selling local but I live on a farm near a small town so if I only need a few items my choice of grocery store is limited as I am not driving half an hour for 4 items. I suppose that means I need to plan my shopping trips. I think that is part of the reason I like canning so much, because I know that the fruits or berries or vegetables used were all grown right here.