The Modern Victory Garden

Whenever I travel to Spokane to visit my mom and family members there, I like to break up my long drive home by stopping at the fruit barns in Thorp Washington.   They carry fruits and vegetables that are in season from the nearby Yakima and Wenatchee growing areas and I always pick up a box (or several!) of fruit.   There are actually three of them located in the same spot and if I cannot find what I am looking for at one (or for a reasonable price) the others are likely to have it.   I stopped there a week and a half ago on my way back from a visit in Spokane and brought home two boxes of Jonagold apples.                              

I set them in my kitchen and ignored them until this past Monday.   I had the day off from work on Monday and it was a rainy and blustery day – perfect weather to stay indoors and do some canning.   I must confess that while I love the results of canning, I am less than keen on the “doing” part of it.   The prep work is time consuming and very messy, the kitchen is always a disaster no matter how much I work to “mop up’ after myself as I go, and it always takes twice as long for about half of the output that I imagine should be happening!   As a result, I generally do more freezing to preserve things than canning.   However, some things are just better canned – tomato sauce, diced tomatoes, dill pickle relish, dill pickles, jams/jellies, and most fruits.   So far this year I have canned quarts of diced tomatoes, pints of tomato sauce, and pints of dill pickle relish.   In addition, I have some pints of dilly beans, pints of various jams, and pints of seasoned tomato sauce still in the pantry from last year’s canning efforts to be used up.  The jams will last us a long while as we go through them slowly so I did not bother making any blackberry jam even though it really was a good blackberry harvest this year.   I will use the seasoned tomato sauce first before using my current year pints of tomato sauce.   All in all, the pantry of canned goods should be sufficient for the two of us given the large amount of items I have put by in the freezer and the fall/winter crops I have growing in the garden that will provide fresh fare.      

However, unlike vegetables, we are not even close to being self sufficient on fruit and we have to buy fruit to supplement our modest garden production.   In general, we like to eat fresh fruit so I do not try to can or freeze a great deal and just purchase what is in season as we need it.  However, I do like to have some fruit options in the pantry for convenience.    The task on Monday was to convert those two boxes of beautiful apples into some quarts of applesauce to restock the pantry with some convenient winter fruit options.   Applesauce, sliced canned pears, and frozen berries are particularly good to pack as part of my workday lunches.   I still have three full freezer bags of blueberries and raspberries in the freezer to finish using (prior season harvest) and with the quarts of applesauce this fall should really be more than enough for the coming year without having to add canned pears to the mix as well.   I am still trying to adjust the amounts I put by each year to our new smaller family size.   Our daughter moved to Pennsylvania in late July 2010 to attend university there and I have been seriously scaling down the amount of food I preserve as a result.   For the most part I have figured out how much less we need, but occasionally I still way over do it.                      

Monday was a day of washing, quartering, and then cooking apples until softened and then running them through my Roma Strainer to extract beautiful sauce.   The strainer does an excellent job of removing the peels, seeds and stems etc. These waste products went into the worm box. The sauce was then flavored with some sugar and good quality cinnamon and brought to a boiling temperature before filling the quart jars and processing them in the canner.   I ended up with 15 quarts of applesauce for my efforts.            

I think that wraps up the canning efforts for me this year.   I am also done with the other preserving efforts other than curing the pumpkins sufficiently so they store well.   The focus now is on keeping the fall and winter crops growing and producing to supplement and extend the frozen, canned, and stored items.   

I am linking this post in to Robin's Thursday's Kitchen Cupboard.  Check it out and join in!

Laura

kitsapfreedomgardener