Canning Frenzy

As soon as I can work up the energy to get up, I'm going to bed.

It was a long day in the kitchen. 

When I went to bed last night, my plan was to get up early this morning and go to the garden before it got so hot.  I didn't factor in that big old margarita I had with dinner last night.  It was almost 9 before my feet hit the floor.  I was slightly headache-y, slow and mean.  Before I'd even finished my first cup of coffee, Nanny called, wondering if I was planning on working in the garden.  I said I was, and that I'd be down there as soon as we finished breakfast. 

It was hot as blazes.  Nanny was already out there, and had picked the squash and eggplants and was working on the tomatoes.  All I really wanted was a few hot peppers and a few squash.  But the butterbeans needed picking - some of them had already dried up - and I knew that if I pick get them Nanny would, and she was already hot enough. 

I came home with a two buckets of tomatoes, a sack of squash, and a sack of hot peppers.  In addition, there were two grocery bags full of pears on my kitchen table.  I set to work peeling and chopping.  By 4 p.m., I'd canned four pints of pear butter, 5 pints of squash pickle, and 6 pints of pepper jelly. 

I made the pear butter a little differently this year.  These little pears were slightly under-ripe and hard as rockes.  Instead of peeling them then cooking them, I just washed them, put them in a roasting pan, and baked them in the oven at 350 for an hour.  They came out brown and wrinkly.  When they cooled, I quartered them and stuffed them through my Sauce Master, peelings, cores, and all, using the juice screen.  The ground pulp felt a little gritty, so I ran them through the squeezer again, using the berry screen (it has a finer mesh).  The second squeezing took out a lot of the "grit."  I put sugar, lemon juice, honey, cinnamon, and cloves in them and cooked them until they were hot and bubbly, then put them in the jars and water bathed them.  In retrospect, I wonder if I should have pressure canned them.  Maybe I'll research that tomorrow.

After the canning was done (which, as you will know if you've ever done any canning, involves washing a mountain of pots, pans, bowls, measuring cups, spoons....) I had to go to the grocery store, as we'd invited the kids over for dinner.  When I got home, the men-folk were doing stuff on the tractor.  It was 9 p.m. by the time we ate.

I'm going to bed.