Stretch Your Savings

We did it!  We learned so much about canning at our Discover You CAN House Party.  I've been super-excited to attempt another batch of canning.  Sooo, after an exhausting, 103 degree morning at the Gilcrease Orchard (accompanied by 2 slightly overheated pre-schoolers), we had enough pickling cucumbers to make a batch of pickles!  We also had a nice little haul of pickling cukes from our garden. I used the "Dill Pickle" recipe from the Ball Canning Blue Book & then added some components from other pickle recipes.  I chose to add a bay leaf, a hot chili pepper, a clove of garlic, a few mixed peppercorns & 1/4 teaspoon of Ball Pickle Crisp to each pint jar. We had to get creative with the different sizes & shapes of pickling cucumbers.  We left the tiniest guys whole, made spears from the long ones (so they'd fit in the jar & leave the required 1/2 inch of head space) & we sliced the fatter ones.  The first few jars were kinda pathetic.  I did

We won!  Ball Canning sent us this kit to have a "Discover You CAN" House Party!   It was really fun & we learned a lot.  We made strawberry jam, which I don't really even like, but I was desperate to learn more about canning.   We made a plain strawberry batch & added blueberries to another batch & added peaches to the 3rd batch.  Of the 3 batches, we cooked 2 & made 1 batch of "no-cook".  We used Classic Pectin, Instant Pectin & Liquid Pectin in the different batches.  And we even experimented with some jars that we simply turned upside down after putting the lid on.  We didn't even process them & they sealed just like the others!  My neighbor who couldn't attend the party told me that trick the week before.  We learned SO much! This picture shows the strawberry & strawberry-peach batches.  The photo below is of the strawberry-blueberry batch.  It was significantly smaller.  We think it's because we used the &