Put Up or Shut Up

Old timey folks like to call canning and preserving the act of “putting up” food. And I’ve been putting up with a lot lately.

Before getting the pressure canner, I mostly stuck with tomatoes and peaches. They’re pretty easy to do and readily available in our area this time of the year.

I recently came into a collection of glass canning jars, which was very exciting. They look really cool, especially with some home-canned produce inside of them.

A few weeks ago, we ended up with a plethora of peppers in our CSA box.

I roasted them with some garlic heads from the garden, and turned them into salsa.

We bought a bushel of peaches at a local market, along with three bushels of tomatoes since my garden has been (til just now) pretty much devoid of any tomato-life to speak of.

The peaches went into several recipes, including plain old peaches in syrup, spiced peaches in a honey syrup, and – my favorite – gingered peach preserves. Good lord, that stuff is like sex in a jar. Good sex in a jar.

We’ve got a nice pantry-ful of yummyness (and a freezer-full, too) that I’ve been putting up all summer and fall. I’ve kept a little list, and realized that there’s quite a lot of food here.

June

12 quarts strawberries yielded

• 5 half-pints strawberry-rhubarb jam
• 3 half-pints strawberry jam
• 2 half-pints strawberry syrup
• plus several cups of frozen strawberries

July

Blueberries: 10 1/2 pounds, all frozen

August

Peaches: 4-quart box yielded 12 cups sliced (frozen with honey syrup)

Corn: 7 ears blanched yielded 1 quart frozen kernels (we have a couple of these)

September

Tomatoes: 3 bushels yielded

• 24 quarts sauce
• 6 pints tomato halves
• 4 pints and 3 half-pints diced tomatoes
• 5 half-pints catsup
• 4 pints and 1 half-pint sweet salsa
• 5 pints seasoned sauce
• 3 pints and 10 halfpints zesty roasted pepper-garlic salsa (used CSA peppers and some other jalapenos for this recipe)

Peaches: 1 bushel yielded

• 15 pints and 4 quarts peaches in syrup
• 7 half-pints gingered peach preserves
• 7 pints spiced peaches
• 7 pints summer fruit cocktail (also used 1 quart of pears for this recipe)

Pears: 4 quarts yielded

• 6 pint jars of pear quarters in light syrup

Bushel carrots yielded 22 pounds diced blanched carrots (frozen)