Berries were nearly nonexistent, too. Raspberries are truly on their way out and the strawberries only gave us enough for the two of us to eat a little on icecream several times a week. No glut, though.
This year's star of the show has been salsa. I've canned the equivalent of 33-34 pints all from my own tomatoes. Plan to give a lot to Betsy if we ever get together.............
In addition I have canned a few of the following:
tomato jam
marinara sauce (from the Ball new canning book, which I believe isn't new anymroe)
Crushed tomatoes from Washington Post, Cathy Barrow instructions. She has a recipe for 25 pounds of tomatoes, hand peeled, cored, de-seeded, etc. I divided it by 4 and did 4 pints. I had more tomatoes than I could use but nowhere near 25 pounds. I need to read up on the victorio strainer for making something that doesn't need so much effort. 6 pounds of tomatoes was about all I could stand to peel, admitting that some of them were the small plum tomatoes, well.....a lot of them were.
Did not go to Utah for canning or for buying peaches. I regret not getting to buy them. I didn't think they would be available and with the pandemic.........well, you know.
So, hoping for next year.
Had so many green beans decided to pickle some--did Curry Spiced Pickled Green Beans from Wa Po a Cathy Barrow recipe. The recipe calls for 2 # green beans and is supposed to fit into 3 pint jars. That didn't happen. At most I used 1.5 pounds, more likely 1.25. The pickling liquid was too much, too. So I used the leftover liquid and leftover beans for a refrigerator pickle--cooked the beans for about 10 minutes. Will cool and allow to sit in fridge for a week before eating to get a deeper pickled flavor.
October 26
We had a very early, slow moving and cold winter storm come through and so I was in the house with boxes and boxes of tomatoes we collected, some ripe. I had 30 pounds of ripe tomatoes (plus) and I made those into tomato sauce, using the victorio strainer to reduce the tomatoes to juice. I followed the instructions from the National Center for Home Food Preservation. You cook it down to the texture you want, runny or thick. For pints I added 1 T bottled lemon juice and 1/2 teas salt, leaving 1/4 inch headspace. I canned the sauce for 45 minutes. The yield for that many tomatoes was 9 pints and 1 quart of juice which I kept in the refrigerator.
The Victorio strainer had some trouble with the tomatoes and I had to clean off the auger 3 times. The Roman Candle tomato particularly lead to problems with its very tough cores and tougher than usual skin.
In November I have found a Cathy Barrow recipe in NY Times for roasted pureed and canned tomatoes. I had some trouble with first 2 batches with siphoning because she said to have only half inch of head space. Two of 5 did not seal! So I did another batch and recanned those two jars and found siphoning trouble again and increased headspace and it worked. In the meantime I got hold of my extension agent via email (the office was closed for veterans day) and she told me that purees have more trouble than anything else with siphoning because of the pressure built up with the boiling food and with tomato puree it boils a long time. She told me I could use siphoned jars if they seal but to use them first.
So Nov. 13 I canned another batch and left more like an inch of head space and things worked well. I especially like this recipe because I can use my blender to puree and I don't have to slip skins. However, I do have to squeeze out the seeds.That's fairly time consuming with 10 pounds and this year the tomatoes have been small in size.
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