Tomato sauce, salsa and pickled radish--oh my!

I canned from 3-9 yesterday and have been at it since 8:30 am this morning. I managed to make 4 quarts of tomato sauce last night, a dozen half-pints of bruschetta topping, 6 pints of salsa and 3 pints of pickled radish--which, wow, is so good! I need to take stock in all I've canned so far this year—I have a stack of jar boxes up to my waist!

I'm getting a little obsessive about this though. My free time has been spent thumbing through canning books, I've bought more vinegar than a normal person should in a week and I should really buy stock in Ball, since I've acquired dozens and dozens of new jars this year. So glad Hilary leant me her jar grabber—that's the key to a pleasant canning experience! Lid grabber, doesn't work so well. Fail.

I'm done for the weekend but definitely not done for good this season. My tomato plants, though riddled with blight, are still producing like mad. There will be more salsa and sauce to come!

Getting Ready for Monster Canning Session #1

After a little searching around last night, I realized my tomato-canning-options are much greater than I initially thought. So I leafed through my canning books last night and made a monster shoppng list so I coud be a litte more creative with what I do with my tomatoes this weekend. I'm going to make bruschetta topping, marinara sauce and tomato-ginger chutney. Also getting supplies for when I have time to play with apples—going to make apple chutney, apple butter and apple sauce. Yay! It's at the point where it's getting fun :)

Under Pressure

I used my pressure canner for the first time last week! A gift from my cousin Joe and his wife Caitlin for our wedding, it's sat in the box since we received it. I finally got up the nerve to use it.

I think it was helpful that I tested the pressure cooking story for EatingWell this year, so I was familiar with how it worked. And it was really the same thing--nothing to be scared of.

I finally killed my cucumber plants--I just couldn't take it anymore. Now I'm swimming in tomatoes. I've made 2 batches of tomato sauce—marinara and fennel-herb—and made my first batch of salsa last night. The dehydrator has been whirring away practically non-stop since I pulled it out—I have quarts of dried peaches, tomatoes and zucchini tucked away in the pantry. Zucchini and peach chips are so tasty!

I'm sad that we will only have this garden for a year. We did manage to find a house to rent in Portland that has a root cellar and raised beds, along with berry bushes. Not sure how we lucked out there but wow! Now I need to get a root cellaring book to see how to store our bounty properly—glad I can put our delicata and potatoes down there, maybe the celery as well. They even cured pancetta and prosciutto down there so perhaps I'll dabble in that too!