Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Where did it go?

I am speaking of the time, of course. Three months since my last post. Whoa!

I did and I did not finish my canning. I finished some of the things, but not others. It was real trial and error this year and some things worked, some did not.

We got quite a few jars of tomato sauce, but not as many as last year. Many of the tomatoes on the vine did not ripen before cold weather hit. I tried some indoor ripening that, for the most part, worked. I did not go out and buy extra tomatoes this year. The sauce is not as rich and red as I would have liked, but I can fix that in the recipes I make.

I am very excited to announce, we had grapes this year! Lots of them. Unfortunately, my attempt at grape jelly was only a moderate success. At first it would not set, so I gradually added more pectin and then BAM! It was too thick. Oh well. I got five jars and I will be able to use them in recipes. Not sure how spreadable the jelly is for say, peanut butter sandwiches?

Beautiful little grapes from the garden. Our fruit harvest is growing. We now have blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, apples, plums, blackberries (if I don't pull them) & grapes. We are supposed to have kiwi, but I have yet to see any of those on the vine.


I am disappointed in myself that I did not get the time to can the applesauce/apple chutney. I did make a wonderful batch of apple butter, but we still have a bunch of apples in cold storage. I used some for Thanksgiving. They are reaching their limit in terms of storage/freshness. Perhaps this is the weekend for some warm, cinnamon applesauce. I am not excited to pull all the canning supplies back out, but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do!

No comments: