- Dec 17, 2009
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- #21
I'm making pickles. Yes I am.
I got the urge to make preserves the other day. Not sure I will, though. It would make nice gifts, but I don't eat a lot of stuff like that these days. I so want the diabetes to go away. My doctor said he thought it was just due to the stress of the pulmonary hypertension and when the disease was controlled and I lost a few pounds it would go away. It is, I did, it didn't. Yet. But I'm still working on it. Lost 10 pounds since retirement.
That's impressive!
I've never canned before the last year or so. My grandma did...cherries, and beets, and plums, and grape jelly, and green beans...and I don't know what else from her big garden. My mom only did jam (and not every year)...and she did tomatoes and peaches a couple of years. She was scared of pressure cookers and when she grew up, it was only her dad who canned...they made sausages and canned those.
I started canning rather late in the season last year, and then didn't do any all winter...but I've been going steady since spring. I've done...beans, chicken, potatoes, carrots, green beans, applesauce, peaches, peach jam, strawberry jam, orange marmalade...I think that's it. Oh, and the pickles. I'm going to do some more carrots, some more potatoes, and hopefully some more green beans. And now we have berries coming..blackberry, huckle berry, and salal...I'm going to make jams of those too, as well as blackberry wine.
I was going to do dandelion wine, but I still haven't started it.
I have a family to feed, though. My son has a full house and when they come (and they come often) they always leave with something. Tomorrow they're taking pickles and peach jam home with them.
Before I had to become the breadwinner, we had a very large garden. I canned and froze veggies until I would almost drop. When I reached that point, then our friends came and picked the rest until it was gone. Needless to say that when I went to work and my kids had to eat things out of a can, their palettes were greatly insulted. LOL
One of my favorites was my canned tomato juice. In each quart of juice I put a teaspoon of sugar and a teaspoon of salt. I also made kraut, but I don't recall the amount of salt I used. We would put in under the house and let it work off under the house. We grew the cabbage. Beautiful big round heads. I did sweet and sour beets as well, those spiced things are just too strong for me. Frozen corn, beans of several varieties, squash, freezer preserves, traditional preserves, canned green beans, and a variety of pickles and relishes. We ate good from that garden. We always grew KY Wonder green beans which are far better canned than frozen. In the fall we had turnips and turnip greens. In the spring we had radishes, lettuce, and little green onions. Sooooo, good. Soooo good for you. Soooo much work.
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