Preserving Your Summer Bounty
Posted on September 6, 2010 by
Growing up my family always had a garden in the summer and we always had an abundance of vegetables that would have gone to waste had my mom not been canning most of her life. I remember watching her with the jars and lids, canning tomatoes and green beans. She also froze items for use later in the year. Canning takes a little bit of work, but trust me it’s worth it when you’re using what you’ve preserved in the middle of winter! Today I’m going to share with you a few tips on how you can get started canning and freezing.
The National Center for Home Food Preservation is an excellent place to start when it comes to not only canning but other methods of food preservation as well, from freezing to drying to everything in between. I have one of their publications that my mom gave me a few years ago, but they have all the information right on their website.
There are two main methods of canning, using a water bath or pressure canning. Some vegetables can be canned used either method, such a tomatoes, but others can not. Green beans for instance should only be canned using a pressure cooker. A couple of weeks ago I got a bushel of tomatoes and canned half of it as diced tomatoes and the other half as tomato sauce using the water bath method. I ended up with a final count of 14 quarts of diced tomatoes and 11 quarts of tomato sauce. Not bad for a day’s work!
I’ve also been freezing fruits and vegetables since spring. When strawberries were in season I froze a bunch of those. I froze some of them alone and some coupled with rhubarb so it’s ready to go. I’ve frozen peas, corn, squash, zucchini, green peppers and even made some creamed corn and froze it for use this fall and winter. Freezing is much easier than canning, but canning it is worth it anyway.
So who out there preserves food for later? Do you can? Freeze? Dry? Tell me what you like!
Neither Wolf nor I did any canning this year. I feel so unprepared for winter now! The idea of having to eat store bought food this winter is nauseating. But with the impending move I didn’t want to haul around tons of jars with the hopes none break.
I don’t blame you. I wouldn’t want to move all the jars either!
Ive been on a pickling and fermenting kick lately. Pickles, pickled veg,sauerkraut, etc. Little success with jams and jellies this year. Cant seem to keep my items as I have been giving them away to friends who love them.
Mostly freezing this year, since I bought a new freezer. I have even been freezing small tomatoes whole. The skins are easy to slip off after they are frozen. I hope to try making sauerkraut this year, and maybe pickled garlic since I have a boatload of that.
We had an abundance of okra this summer from friends. Since I have already frozen lots of okra I decided to can some in quarts. It will be interesting to see how it taste when we use the canned okra.
I had planned to make some pickles this year, but my cucumbers were eaten faster than I could use them!
This is great! We started a garden this year and have been trying to find good resources for canning and preserving. I will definitely bookmark the link you posted. Thanks!
My wife and I have had a garden and been preserving for the past few years. So far this year there’s many jars of tomato sauce and yesterday more than 2 dozen jars of salsa. Lots of beans and butternut squash have been canned, and now we’re waiting for the Cortlands for making apple sauce.
Well, I’ve made some pineapple marmalade, and guava sorbet (is that preserved?)a pineapple herbal wine, preserved lemons and today it is guava jam in the works.
It sounds like everyone is canning delicious things for later! Yum!
Do you blanch everything before you freeze it? I froze a ton of green beans over the summer and didn’t blanch. Now when I cook them, they taste chewy and tough and we don’t like them! What are your freezing tips?
Blanching things like green beans really is the key. Or you can cook them fully and then freeze and just thaw and reheat when ready to serve.
Most other things I just freeze straight up.
[...] Preserving Your Summer Bounty – Dianne, our Greenists guide for all things food, gave us her tips for preserving food from the garden for winter, and lots of people commented with their favorite foods to can and freeze. Do you freeze, can, or dry food for winter? [...]