Terry was quite spoiled growing up... His mom canned like crazy. Now, I have to can like crazy! My mom did can while growing up but not quite like Terry's mom. So, since being married I've learned to can salsa, mandarin sauce, apple sauce, spaghetti sauce, tomato soup, Italian tomatoes, enchilada sauce, apple/peach pie filling, pickles, and it seems like every year we try something new. My family loved chili sauce growing up, but Terry thinks it's too sweet, so I normally just steal a few from my mom since I'm the only one that eats it.
So far this year, we have canned apple/pear sauce, sliced apples, salsa, and Italian tomatoes.
Canning for the most part saves us a lot of money and it is the best way for us to build our food storage. It really only gets expensive if we can't get any fresh fruit, and a lot of the time we wait for Ridley's case lot sale and stock up on canned fruit there. It might not be as good, but we want canning to save us money, not cost us more.
My mom always steamed her jars, and luckily that's what Terry's mom does as well, because I have no idea how to water bath!
While canning takes a lot of time and work, Terry and I find it to be well worth it. We love having food on hand, the fact that it is home made, saves us money, and we can grow almost everything needed in our garden (or bum off family since our garden only produced squash this year and nothing else.)
Plus, we have plenty of room in our house to store it!
We have a cellar below our house with plenty of storage and it keeps everything cool. We just restock the pantry with all the food we keep stored down here.
We are grateful that we have great teachers to help us become self efficient, and we love hearing about new foods we can bottle and store. If you have any good ones, let us know!
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