Canning & Preserving Fresh Homestead Produce From the Garden

Then I'll prepare peppers and onions for both the salsa we will make today.

The recipe calls for a tablespoon of hot sauce. Neither my family likes a lot of spice, so I'm just going to do half a tablespoon because I can always add more, but once it's in there, it's in there. We're going to get this up on the stove and cook it down.

For our stewed tomatoes, the last couple of things we have to put in here are our garlic, oregano, sugar, hot sauce, cumin, and salt. My stewed tomatoes are looking fabulous. They are just about ready. I'd say another 20 minutes.

I'm going to add some taco seasoning.

I'm going to plug this in and let this cook. Then, a little bit later, we'll add some queso and some salsa, which'll be fantastic.

So we're going to make a second batch of salsa, and that's what we'll put in here later.

Once everything's cooked down, I'm just going to turn it all off and wait for my jars to be sanitized and cleaned by my dishwasher. We'll come back this afternoon and get everything canned and packed. I'm just about done. Both my canners are being filled, and I'm getting them on the stove.

I ended up straining off my stewed tomatoes and decided just to do tomato juice.

We use that way more than stewed tomatoes. I think that makes more sense to me.

I'm going to get my canners up on the stove, get those warmed up, start filling some jars, and get stuff going. We're going to do our tomato juice for 45 minutes in the water bath canner and the salsa for 15 minutes in the water bath canner.

I'm going to put a little bit of lemon juice in the bottom of my jars, just for the acidic factor. I went ahead and just started loading in my tomato juices.

Broccoli

We're cleaning out the broccoli here. I already had this soaking in salt water, and this is drained off and rinsed.

So I was just cleaning it up, chopping off anything that I didn't want on there, getting this in the pot to blanch, and then kind of the whole time going back and forth between my kids, trying to get the dishwasher going, trying to get the kitchen cleaned up a little bit, just making the most out of my time while my kids are kind of content.

This is a Brussels sprout and broccoli mix.

It's just whatever was down in the garden that I picked today. I'm just going to let this cool off, and I'll throw this in a gallon-sized Ziploc freezer bag to use throughout the winter months. I would cook with this by just taking out my gallon-size bag, breaking it apart a little bit, and throwing in what I wanted in a pot or on a cookie sheet to bake. We would roast it or drop it in a steamer and steam it.

My water bath canner is just now coming up to a boil. Tomorrow, all I have to do is blanch and freeze some cabbage. I have a whole basket of pickles that I need to deal with, but those will be for tomorrow. I think those pickles are kind of labor-intensive. I wanted to make pickle relish and saw a recipe for a cucumber salsa.

Here's what our crock pot meal is looking like after I added some of the salsa. It smells fantastic. My chicken is just now getting to the point where it's broken apart and is going to get nice and tender, which is nice. I'll add the queso, and we'll have that with tacos, fresh lettuce or sour cream, cheese, or whatever anybody wants.