being not doing

I didn’t know about the Can Jam challenge until December, and it’s probably for the best: there’s no way I could have canned anything more than the three things I made last year. Reading through Local Kitchen’s summary of the challenge was interesting, though, as I realized that I’ve canned something in nearly every category [...]

As in previous years, I could not resist the allure of apples in season. In deference to my dramatically diminished ability to process and can, we only picked sixty pounds of apples rather than the hundred-plus pounds that we typically bring home from Larriland Farm. Sadly, this was not a good year for local apples, [...]

I don’t have a picture to share, because I am too lazy to pull all the jars out of the cupboard and clear off the dining room table to take one, but I have even more canning to report! Once the Granny Smith apples came into season, I was able to make the traditional brandied [...]

Lemon garlic pickles, spicy bread and butter pickles, brandied peaches, sour cherry-walnut conserve, cherry sauce (with rum), and canned cherries, with pickled summer squash in front. Now is as good a time as any to report on the canning I did this summer. I had big plans to make cherry jam, or even cherry preserves, [...]

Applesauce, tomato sauce, pear mincemeat, and pickled beets, with spiced pear jam in front. A couple of weeks ago, we spent an afternoon at Larriland Farm, where we picked our own bags of Stayman apples (48 pounds), beets (20 pounds), and Roma tomatoes (30 pounds). I also bought three smallish pie pumpkins and a box [...]