Tomatoes

Tis the year and the season for canning. With a little encouragement from Helga and then some help we whipped out these 14 jars of tomatoes in about an hour. She's got a great system down and it's a lot of fun! only 2-3 jars are actually from my garden, but hey it's a star.

I decided to use a jar to make spaghetti sauce and it was pretty good, as good if not better than the store bought sauce.

Thanks Helga!

Food for Thought

I love the summer months-the fresh Squash & Zucchini, Peas, Beans, tomatoes, beets, strawberries, and as one of our experiments...onions.

Onions were much easier than I expected-just stuck one I hadn't used in the ground and it multiplied by five. Pretty fantastic. One day I'll have this all down. Until then it's all just experimentation that is adding knowledge to the old brain.

This is a our main garden this year, comprising of a 1/3rd of our plots. It's been doing great and I've continued to plant more seeds as we harvest to see that we can get as much as possible.

Here is our 2nd garden plot-the Tomato Garden which is on top of the carport.

(Photographed 9/2/11)

Zaycon is also helping the food storage to grow. 40# off ground beef. 4-10# tubes broken down into 1 and 2 pound packages

My mom found me another steamer as Savers (Value Village in Utah) and I was able to put it to good use.

I bought just under 40 pounds of Peaches-ate a couple pounds and the rest I was able to turn into 15 quarts of Peaches. I actually hadn't canned peaches for about 20 years when I did it with my Mom and I can't say that I paid that much attention back then. Luckily Helga Jackson has taken me under her wing and has been teaching me a lot about canning and gardening and good recipes to go along with it. She took the time to come over and help me-show me the process and give me an extra hand. She is amazing and it was soo easy, although she assured me you needed 2 pairs of hands, not just one-especially with 3 kids running around. The result is beautiful and I can't wait to try these out.

Thanks Helga I had a great time and I learned a lot!