Thursday, December 1, 2011

Preserving Food 2011: Canning, Freezing, and Dehydrating


We have had an extra busy fall. Kelsi started graduate school in September and I am still in nursing school. We haven't had a lot of extra time for the blog. Our free time was spent harvesting the garden and getting it ready for winter. We preserved more food this year than ever before. Here is last years canning as a comparison. 
This entry is not only to share with you guys how much we have done, but to document and compare with for next year. We doubled our canning from last year. 
Crushed Tomatoes: 19quarts left. 10 already eaten!
Pickled cucumber chunks: 3 quarts. These make a great addition to any sandwich!
Spicy pickles: 14 quarts
Extra Spicy Pickles: 8 Quarts

25 total quarts of pickles

Peaches: 29 quarts
Apple Pie Filing: 4 quarts. 4 already eaten
Applesauce: 9 quarts. 2 eaten. NOTE TO SELF: should have done more of these.
Cherry Pie Filling: 5 quarts. 2 eaten
Pears: 9 quarts

Spicy Salsa: 14 Pints
Garden Salsa: 16 pints
Assorted jams/jellies: 26 half pints.
Pesto cubes: 2 bags. You can just add these to your noodles and you have instant pesto noodles. Tastes great too!
Peas
More peas.
Lots of beans: Bags and bags full.
3-12oz jars of dehydrated tomatoes and a 1 quart bowel.
Apple fruit leather. It doesn't look like a lot, but each container is 1.75 quarts
I had to play around with the consistency of the mixture so each batch turned out a little different. One batch was more like apple bark, but they all taste really good!
We also have 11 loafs of zucchini bread in the freezer made by Kelsi.

Hopefully we can double our canning again next year.

Thanks for reading!



6 comments:

Lacey said...

IMPRESSIVE!!!

Amy said...

What about your dehydrated tomatoes?!

Mike said...

Ok Amy, Ill add a pic too! Thanks for the reminder!

Amy said...

That's what I'm here for!! :)

Mr. H. said...

Congratulations on a such a nice amount of preserved food. I hope you do continue to blog about what you put up each year as I for one really enjoy seeing what others are up to in this department. I'm jealous of those cherries...something I have never canned but hope to do so with fruits off our own trees in the future. Enjoy:)

Mike said...

Mr. H: even though we have been absent for a while, I still keep up with your blog. You guys rock in the preserving for winter category! We have a lot of catching up to do! Especially the root crops, we are out of carrots already.

I hope your orchard is ready soon! The pears, cherries, and a large amount of apples came from our back yard. We did have to purchase some.

Garage Workbench.

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