Recently, Rachel tried making apple butter for the first time. It came out so well, she decided to make a big batch and can it, so we'd have a supply of apple butter in our pantry.
As it happens, we've only canned using the pressure method so far, and apple butter only needs to be water bath canned. We used the same pot for this, but found that water bath canning is much faster and easier. Boo and Rachel worked together peeling, coring, and grating up all those apples.
Rachel spiced the apples and cooked and cooked and cooked until eventually the mixture was relatively smooth. We don't worry about getting it extremely smooth, as we don't mind chunky apple butter.
We ended up with 16 pints of apple butter. That should keep us for a while!
When Rachel and I went grocery shopping this week, we discovered that the local berries, known as "Mora" are in season right now. We really enjoy these berries cooked up as a cobbler, but the berries are only available for a few weeks each year. So, we decided to try canning up some of these berries.
This was another first for us, as we had to do some guesswork/adapting to come up with a recipe for canning these. We're new to canning, and we're still most comfortable following a recipe and set of directions to a "T", but we had to wing it this time, as there aren't any directions available for canning mora berries!
Boo and David sorted through the berries, to pull out the bad ones and make sure no stems or leaves made it into the canning jars. Then Rachel canned up 14 quarts of berries. Off season cobbler for us!
We're needing to can some more chicken, as we've used up our supply, but I don't supposed we'll be getting to that anytime soon - we're all pretty tired of canning at the moment. At the same time, we're feeling pretty proud of our canning accomplishments, and especially of our recently acquired skills in new areas!
2 comments:
Been thinking about you lately...hoping everything is going well. Sounds like it's going quite yummily (is that a word? it is now!). If I were there, I'd be willing to help out with the tasting. You know, to make sure no bad apples or berries made it into the jars. ;0)
Blessings, hugs, and prayers your way!
Sherry (GODismyjoy)
Soooo - are you going to share your canning experience of Mora berries? Just in case someone else has a supply they need to save?
Congratulations on all that canning tho', tickled to see you did this with a water bath... just like the puppies :lol:
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