Ahhh, music to my weary ears. I have been canning all.day.long. The sounds of the jars sealing on the counters and table is like a reward for all the hard work I (and the girls!) have put into this today.
I have gone back and forth a bit on the canning issue. I am not wholey convinced that canned food is as nutritionally entact as I wish it would be. For quite a few years I just skipped doing as much canning and either froze produce or bought fresh in the winter instead. I still prefer fresh produce, however, it stands that when I make soups and such the vegetables are cooked in the process anyhow so what difference does it make to buy fresh in that instance?
Paul's mom has always been the queen of thrift and frugality. She cans up a storm even in her 70s. She often whips up batches of soup and cans it. While I love the convenience of that and do put up *some* of that sort of thing myself, it just isn't that advantageous to make *that* much soup ahead of time.
I generally like to have a pot of meat par boiling on the stove top in the winter time. I throw in fresh vegetables by and by as it simmers. Maybe Maria ends up making a batch of oven crusty bread to be eaten smeared with a thick layer of fresh home made butter. Mmmmm. I almost wish it were winter right now! ( I don't make those kinds of things in the summer. It is just way too hot!) I love those smells.
While it is satisfying to have our basement pantry shelves lined with home canned goodies, I don't know if it is actually a money saver compared to if you go to the store and buy some generic equivilent. But I know what's in my jars isn't generic! I know beyond a doubt that what's in those jars has been raised organically and handled cleanly. Makes me feel good about feeding the stuff to my family.
Not to brag, but our garden this year is the biggest and best we have ever created.
Some of the girls were butchering chickens today instead of canning. That needs to be done, too. I am thinking of taking some of the chickens and making and canning a soup base with bits of chicken meat, broth, carrots, celery, and potaotoes. Paul's mom always does this. Again, not sure how much of a time saver it is when our family needs a gallon of it at a time! lt's almost just as easy to make "small" (gallon sized) batches as we need them.
Today I made up a bunch of blueberry, blackberry, and peach pie fillings. We eat dollops of this in our yogurt about as often as we make pie with it. We freeze most of our fruit otherwise because we like to make icy fruit smoothies in the blender.
