Canning.

One of the benefits of owning a home, well owning our home, is the fruit trees in our backyard and our huge supply of tomatoes!  This year, we had to figure out what to do with it all.  I made a ton of pasta sauce and we made applesauce, but after eating those items for a week or so, we decided it was high time we got a bit more creative.

So we decided, or maybe I should say Peter decided, to make homemade apple jam, and that he did!  What you see below is our second batch of jam.  We planted ourselves on our couch one Sunday afternoon and peeled and diced apples.  We then threw those diced bits into a pot with sugar, cinnamon, a little bit of lemon juice, and a bit of pectin and boiled it on the stove, and before we knew it we had apple jam!  Fun huh?  And super easy, just slightly time consuming, but I suppose that's expected right?

















And what's a girl that loves Mexican food to do with so many tomatoes?  Well make salsa of course!  We boiled the tomatoes in hot water for a bit and then submerged them in ice cold water to get the skins off - it worked like a charm!  And we learned a new trick.  While sitting in those same planted positions on the couch, we diced up peppers, jalapenos, onions, tomatoes, and then cooked all those ingredients with the tomatoes in a pan on the stove for a bit, then placed it in the fridge to let it chill.  And we canned it the next day!

And there you have it...and now we have apple jam, apple butter, and salsa in our cupboard.