Can, Baby, Can

My house is overrun with produce. Not only has the first hard frost precipitated me yanking every remaining carrot, tomato, and other edible squash from the vegetable garden, but we are also awash with free apples and pears from our neighbor's fruit trees.

You see, I had to go and order a canner. I looked for one in the thrift shops, but I think I waited too late in the season to begin hunting for one, and got stuck paying full price. However, I think it is paying for itself with the glistening jars of canned goodies that I've put up already. Canning is very easy, actually, if you stick to a boiling water canner and high acid foods. Fortunately for us, that is all that we are interested in canning, so it is working out well as a way to preserve garden largesse.

Thus far, I have made 4 quarts of applesauce, 4 half pints of apple jelly, 2 quarts and 2 pints of apple pie filling, 2 twelve ounce and 2 six ounce jars of honey spiced peach jam, and 3 pints of honey spiced peaches. Oh and 7 six ounce jars of blackberry jelly. I have strained pulp, cooked apple peels in water (to make the apple jelly, a process which imparts a beautiful pink color to the jelly from the peels), used plenty of cheesecloth and managed to burn myself on the chin (now I know that applesauce 'burps' when it's being cooked), and I'm not even half done. I still have about four quarts of blackberries to use up in the freezer, not to mention about a bushel of pears and a bushel of apples on my kitchen floor. And I have six sugar pumpkins to roast and freeze. And carrots to clean, peel, and freeze.

I really enjoy the product, but it's a lot of work getting there. Free is good, so I hate to turn down free apples. In fact another neighbor has a tree full which I haven't even touched yet. I'm trying to plow through the rest of what I've got, and then I will hopefully get a second wind and pick more apples, to repeat the process again.

Of course my husband is all in favor of these endeavors. He said my apple pie filling tastes just like McDonalds' apple pies, which is a great compliment in his mind. I just followed the recipe from Ball's website, so if it happens to taste like Mickey-D's, that is something they will have to take up with the Ball folks. And truthfully I love all the goodies too. They are pretty in their jars, and certainly we will be (and already have been) gifting them to friends and neighbors for Christmas gifts. However, I would like to know how the old pioneer women found a way to, you know, keep the rest of their house from sliding into FILTH while they were putting up all their preserves and so forth. Our house once again is a scene of chaos and apparent bomb debris, the product of our two energetic children and my tired self. Tonight is grading night, too, since I teach tomorrow.

Wah, wah, wah. I know, I'm whining about having too much good stuff! I will be very happy when this season of harvest is over and I can put my feet up by the woodstove and relax a bit. And don't even ask about the bathroom. Quite frankly it's almost as if we don't HAVE a guest bathroom any more. I have more drywalling mud sanding to do, more drywall mudding to do, painting to do...and I just couldn't be bothered. My husband has been working like a Trojan getting the tile cut and laid on the floor, but I am just tired of dealing with it. Sometime I'm going to have to drag myself away from my apple mounds and get back in there and deal with it. Not, however, today...I am going to set up that peeler/corer gizmo, borrowed from another neighbor, and make some pear butter. With cardamom, because it's better that way. And some tawny port, since DH opened the bottle. So there. :~P