Canned

Over the weekend we were perhaps the most motivated people on the planet. It must have been the adverts we saw for hardy mums or something, but all of a sudden we realized that end summer was upon us. SOB did a bunch of yard work, and spent almost eight hours sealing the driveway, even though it was 93 degrees. And me? Well, aside from all of the fun stuff I did with the kids while dad was working, I cleaned the hell out of the front porch, did four loads of laundry, and performed a little magic. What kind of magic, you say? In just two days, I turned all of this:

Into this:

Ta Da! (Pausing for applause.)

Our first ever canning experiment was what I would refer to as a moderate success. The downfalls? Well, it was messy, but we expected that. As first timers, we ended up changing pots twice, so there were a lot of dishes to be done. Plus, peeling the tomatoes made our kitchen look like a crime scene. Also, the yield on the tomatoes was a little disappointing. I had about ten pounds of harvest, which only came out to three quarts of processed tomatoes.

On the plus side, the salsa canning was great! Since the salsa is fairly easy to make, canning it was a snap. It'll keep much, much longer this way, so we'll be able to enjoy the fruits of our labor long into the winter. Plus I still have at least a few more jars of tomatillos on the plants out there, so I can guarantee I'll be canning some more salsa verde. The peppers were easy as well. We'd never eat that many peppers before they'd go bad, so pickling them seemed like a fun idea. Since the brine is so acidic, they don't have to process as long, so the whole thing took a lot less time.

All in all, I'd give the whole adventure a B+. I think we'll hold off on canning tomatoes until we have the big farm and I literally have 50 pounds of fruit to work with, but I hope to have my pantry stocked with salsa and peppers by the time this baby is born!

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I choose these shots for my best shots of the week. For more best shots, visit Tracy Clark's blog!