Canning has been something I have learned from Mom and she learned from her mom!!! It's a way of living and life for the Mennonite/Amish folks. Normally, you have a large garden filled with fruits and vegetables and then you preserve and harvest the foods for your cellar! Times do change things over the years and I remember my mom having a smaller than normal garden. Gardening wasn't her favorite thing to do but the opposite was try for my mother-in-law! Mike grew up with having a huge garden to help out with including fruit trees. Mom Lapp grew many, many foods in her day and still loves to garden. She is the one who inspired me to start a garden after Mike and I got married!
I started with a really small garden. Mike made me one raised bed. I planted seeds and watched them grow. I learned that I love to watch growth and to pick foods from my back yard was awesome!!! We have expanded the one small raised bed to many small ones now! Ashlyn shares her love of gardening with me!!! She loves to run out and eat green beans straight from the plant and smell the tomato plants and pick fresh peas and strawberries. Austin picks fresh chives and spinach and eats them! Gardening has become a necessity for our family during the spring and summer months!!!
Like I said earlier, time does change things over the years and its true with gardening. It used to be that EVERYONE in our county (that's why my mom had a garden back in the day) would have their own garden. But now there are lots and many road side stands that sell fresh garden foods that it's not a demand for each family anymore. There are some foods that we really like but I choose to not plant (corn being one of them) and just buy locally grown. There are some other foods that just won't grow for me either and I'm confused with why not??? I planted multiple watermelon plants this year and each one died. Not sure why??? I also dream of big juicy strawberries! I do have a berry patch but so far they have always been small.
I planted some tomatoes this year and they did well. If you want to use tomatoes for juice, I learned from my sister, that you can freeze them until your tomatoes are done for the season and then juice them all together. This is what I did for my juice I used to make Marinara Sauce!!!
We love this sauce for pizza, for dipping and for spaghetti!!! I only made a half batch this week because I still have some regular pizza sauce in the cellar to use up.
Yesterday, I did grape juice in the garage. I do not like this job and I am SO GLAD its over with. It's not too hard work but I just don't like to work with hot juices and steamers!!! They kind of scare me. But, we need grape juice and so I picked up my preordered four boxes of concord grapes and steamed them yesterday!
I picked off all the grapes from the stems and filled four juicers. I was so glad to have the garage be my spot for this messy job!!!
The juice needs to steam for at least an hour. Then the hot juice goes into jars and gets cold packed for 10 minutes to seal! What a good feeling to have this job completed!!!
I still have a few more things to can. I also have some of the grape juice we can order that comes already pressed and steamed. All I will need to do with that juice when it comes it fill up jars and seal them. You may ask or think, "Why don't you just can this kind of juice if it skips all the mess and hot steamers???" We do love the taste of both juices but the taste is different. The off the stem concord grape juice that I steam has a pure grape flavor. It's rich and tastes so good!!! I pour one quart into a gallon pitcher and add some sugar and water! The other kind is not so strong and tastes more like a wine juice. This we usually drink straight out of the jar. No sugar or water added.
Soup and meat is another food I want to can yet. That will wait now until I get some housecleaning done here at home!!!
Canning foods and filling up my cellar shelves is rewarding! I love to go to the cellar and pull a few jars off the shelf and serve it to my family! It's the easiest way to make a quick dinner. It adds fresh juice to the fridge when we are wanting a delicious drink! Peaches and pears are the perfect side dish with chocolate cake or to make a quick fruit salad! Salsa and pizza sauces always give me the option to make homemade pizza in a flash!
I am so blessed to be raised in a culture that knows how to preserve canned foods!!! Thanks Mom for teaching me!!!
