Preserving through Canning

The garden is producing is mass quantities now, especially, zucchini, squash, cucumbers and pickling cucumbers.  So I've been doing lots of canning the preserve these delicious veggies.

Fresh veggies from our garden

I've gotten so many pickling cucumbers that I've had to make two batches of dill pickles.  One batch is a little dill which I like and the other batch is extra dill for Jamie and Hailey.

Jars of really dill pickles

So far I have made 4 quarts and 10 pints of light dill pickles and 1 quart and 12 pints of really dill pickles for us to enjoy this winter.

When the Royalty's were here visiting us girls went blueberry picking.  Hailey and I picked extra of course to make some blueberry jam.

Fresh picked blueberries

Blueberry Jam

I only made 6 1/2 pints of blueberry jam.  I'm the only one who really likes this jam.  I love to have this in the winter for breakfast on some toast with a mug of tea.  Yummy!!!

Lastly I made some Ziesty Salsa.  It's not really Ziesty but that is the name of the recipe from the Blue Ball canning book that I followed a little bit.

Pot of Salsa cooking

This salsa is very tasty an not hot and spicy at all.  I make this salsa every year for Hailey as it's one of her favorites.  This year I added zucchini, yellow squash, green onions, white onions all from our garden and then also carrots, celery, 2 types of mild peppers, jalapeno peppers for a little spice, cilantro, garlic and tomatoes.

It's has lots of veggies in it as you can see but tastes great.

Ziesty Salsa

I ended up making 1 1/2 pint and 15 pints.  The 1/2 pint was gone the next day, Hailey actually ate the whole jar in one sitting.

I defiantly will be making more of this I think before the season ends.

Below is a picture of my canning cabinet, It's pretty full already. I do have one more shelf on the very bottom which I usually keep my empty jars on.  Jamie & I have talked about adding some kitchen cabinets in our laundry closet which is in our kitchen.  We should be able to fit at least 2 double door cabinets.  We designated putting the kitchen cabinets in as a winter project but I don't think we can wait that long.  I still haven't even canned any of the pears that our growing in our orchard, any peaches we have too that may have survived the cicadas and I always make applesauce and I wanted to try apple pie filling too this year.  Of course Jamie will be canning some of his venison too once hunting season is here.  So I guess we will be putting in the cabinets as soon as we have some extra time.

Canning cabinet almost full already