First Round of Canning

It’s been a super busy week. Hanna and Ryan are out of town, and you’d think with all the quiet I’d have some nice lazy days. Not so much!

I launched a new community called the KISS Club, so I’ve been spending lots of time there, still posting to my other blogs (of which I have added one!), trying to get the house cleaned up, and the weeds out of the garden.

On top of it all ~ or maybe in between it all I’ve finally gotten the courage to start canning. It is the goal of the garden this year to put up enough veggies to last through the winter. (I am having my doubts about that at this point… but we’ll see).

I am up to my ears in cucumbers, and we (well, Ryan and Hanna) eat a lot of hamburger pickles so I thought I’d start there.

I got a brand new Ball Blue Book, and picked out the recipe. My timing needs some work ~ who knew a HUGE pot of water took so long to boil? But I managed to get 7 pints of hamburger pickles done. YAY!!

Then I took a whack at the Zucchini. I have the most magical zucchini plants. They create 13 inch zucchini in one day ~ so needless to say, there’s some zucchini around!

I found this delicious sounding Zucchini Relish recipe, and once I asked around to find out what one does with relish (I know, I know) I decided to jump in and try it out.

Well, I think I did a couple things wrong. The battery in my scale is dead, so I couldn’t actually weigh out 2 and 1/2 pounds of zucchini. I think I may have underestimated.

I also think I whirred it up too long in the food processor. It came out looking pretty much like relish before it was even cooked. oops.

When it came down to it though, it tasted good ~ it just had the consistency of say… um.. applesauce? instead of chunky relish.

But did I mention it tasted good?

That’s the relish on the right.

So I’ve started, and I’ve got so much left to do. It’s getting less stressful the more I do it, and I’m starting to get the timing of it all a little closer too.

Last night my mom stopped by and gave me some tips:

1. Heat your jars in the water bath water. (I’d been doing them in the dishwasher) That way they are ready when you’re water’s ready.

2. Heat up a separate pot of water to boil your lids in. It also gives you extra hot water in case you misjudge how much space your jars are going to take up in the water bath. (which I totally did on the relish)

So… I’m going to try the relish again. I’m going to cut it up myself this time, instead of using the food processor. I seem to get a little overzealous with that thing, and trying to get all the chunks small enough leads to most of them being way too small. I’m also going to replace the battery in the scale so I can see just how much my 13 inch Zucchini’s actually weigh ~ oh and make sure I’m using enough zucchini in the recipe.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

Got any favorite canning recipes? I’d love to hear them. I’ve got tomatoes coming in now, so we’ll be starting on sauces, and salsas soon.