My Try at Canning

If you know me very well, you know I am far from being a domestic housewife. Not even close, bud!  I'm more on the other side of the fence...the one where I would prefer to be in my boots and carhartts in the tractor or out in a dirty field any day over some office.  I'm different...let's just get that out there.  One of those things is my hate of being in the house / kitchen for long periods of time.  HATE.

It all started when Jerry, who I work with, mentioned he had a tree loaded with peaches and we should all come get as many as we wanted. He was leaving on a cruise for the week and said they would just go to waste otherwise. I love all fruits and Kent loves peaches so I thought I really should go pick some but knew we would never eat them before they go bad, so I thought to CANNING. First of all, I am not a fan of pressure cookers and I also didn't have much time or patience for that kind of crap either.    After reading a bunch on the Internet, I learned how to do it using a water bath instead. 

I picked three grocery sacks of peaches at Jerry's and Friday night I got everything out and ready to go for Saturday.  While I was learning about canning peaches I found a strawberry jam recipe that was pretty simple so I gave that a shot also Friday night.  It tasted good while it was in the making, so we will have to crack open a jar for breakfast one of these mornings.

One batch of fresh strawberry jam

Saturday I worked on the peaches.  I was really wishing I had a partner to help because there sure is a lot of steps in canning anything, especially the peaches.  I'm proud to say that I did a couple batches all by myself and every jar sealed! 

Peaches!

Kent was home the next day and after eating a jar of them, he decided we needed to go get more.  We cooked up a few more batches and called it quits for the weekend.  It's not hard, but it sure is time consuming!  Good deal it was a crappy day outside because thats about the only thing that will make me want to stay in and do something like this.  It really was worth it since I now have a bunch of jars that are better than any peaches you could buy at the store and they were practically free other than buying the jars that I will get to use over and over again.  The only part that will be tricky...hiding them from Kent so they don't all get eaten in the next week.  :)