Canning season!!

Thursday, August 20, 2015


OMFG!! It's that time of the year again! Canning time! 

I got a wonderful deal from the farmer's market this past Sunday (the 16th), 2 - 25 pound boxes for $25, I also bought several bags of tomatoes marked down (I always go late in the day, just before they start packing up). He also gave me another 5 bags of the yellow tomatoes for free!

So, probably about 60 pounds altogether. Quite a haul for me to lug home on the bus in my little shopping cart.

So, I made salsa by straining the yellow tomatoes & I ended up with 6 pints of salsa & about 1 liter of juice (they were very juicy!). Very weird looking, but amazingly delicious! I already drank the entire liter of juice!

Here's a photo:

I canned 12 - 1 liter jars of tomatoes yesterday & am just finishing 6 more. And one went straight in the fridge, no processing necessary, as they'll be eaten in short order.

I made 5 jars of refrigerator pickles using my grand mother's recipes, with minor modifications. I started making refrigerator pickles about 2 years ago, because my pickles were delicious, but never crunchy. Which made me sad.

For the last 2 years I have been making refrigerator pickles using Japanese cucumbers, which I figured might work better for pickles that would not be processed. If you are not familiar with Japanese cucumbers, they look like tiny baby long English cucumbers. Taste similar, as well.  But like their large English cousins, they have a softer skin & a milder flavour. 

But this year, I am going to use the modified recipe & regular pickling cucumbers.

I marked the date I put them in the fridge (yesterday), but I am not sure how much time to give them. The Japanese cucumbers had a thinner skin, so logically these might take longer. But how much longer? My grand mother's recipe said to wait 6 weeks, but that was for the processed kind, so these might take longer? I am not sure. I'll figure it out.

Update: 

I got some more pickling cucumbers for free from the Salvation Army the other day, many of them curly, so they wouldn't fit in a jar very well. So I sliced them very thinly half-peeled them & made a jar for the refrigerator. They were ready & quite delicious in only 1 week!