Planning for Canning! ;-)

[amazon_syren]

Preserves I Already Have:

Heaps of frozen Red Russian kale, Rainbow chard, and rappini (and a little bit of borrage, because hey).
1L frozen raspberries
3C pickled beans
3.5 C goblin fruit jam (choke cherries & black currants + extra stuff)

+ (from last year)

3 pints of cucumber pickles (that I made last year) + 2 pints of someone else's cucumber pickles (taht he made last year)
1/4 C Ground Cherry "marmalade" (that I made last year)
1 pint of relish + 1 pint of tomato chutney (made by my friend's mom)
1C grape jelly (made by a friend who brought it as a hostess' gift)
1-2 C Various Jams from Mr Wilson

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Preserves I want to make:

4lbs tomatoes + 1lb nectarines + a bulb or two of garlic --> As many cup-jars of salsa as that'll give me
10lbs tomatoes --> as many pint-jars and/or 1C jars of diced/crushed tomatoes as that'll give me
5lbs tomates + a few bulbs of garlic and a few onions + garden basil --> As many 1C jars of bruchetta as that'll give me
1lb tomatoes + all the cores and skins from the the rest of the tomato masacre + 1-2 bulbs of garlic, lots of garden oregano, garden savoury, balsamic vinegar, and dried rosemary --> as many half-cup jars of tomato sauce as that'll give me

POSSIBLY some extra tomatoes (perhaps from the garden, this time) - roasted with herbs and garlic in the oven and then frozen-in-pucks in the freezer

1lb nectarines + skins from another 1lb of nectarines --> Nectarine butter, as much as possible

POSSIBLY a choke-cherry preserve (something like a chutney? see below) that involves onion, basil, and peppermint... not sure yet.

As much apple butter as I can make with the apples from Idioglossia's tree

POSSIBLY some apple slices dried in my dehidrator

Crab Apple jelly using crab apples harvested from trees along the Canal and in local parks

Half a dozen LARGE eggplants (farmers' market again) roasted, diced, and frozen into pucks (the same way I do the greens) - I will try to go a little easier on the salt this year...

Multiple Jack-o-lanterns worth of pumpkin butter

POSSIBLY half a dozen 2C freezer-boxes of diced-and-blanched winter squash (or pumpkin) purely for the easiness of dumping already-prepped and partially-cooked veggies into a dinner in the middle of winter.

Still more frozen greens a-go-go (because we kind of live on that stuff over winter)

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Things I will have to buy in order to make these preserves:

Upwards of 5 pie pumpkins (+ possible winter squashes)
6 large eggplants
2lbs nectarines
20lbs sauce tomatoes (or other tomatoes... whatever)


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Possible Chokecherry Thing (adapted heavily from the Chokecherry Chutney recipe in Rona Mogelon's Wild In The Kitchen):

6 C chokecherries
1.5 C diced apples (AKA: 2-3 apples, diced[1])
1.5 C granulated sugar
1.5 C red wine vinegar
1 C diced red onion (or other onion)
1 C dried dried cranberries

0.25 C each: fresh basil leaves (shredded), fresh peppermint leaves (shredded)
1 tsp each: salt, dried rosemary
0.5 tsp each: black pepper, ground cloves


~*~


TTFN,
Amazon.


[1] I originally said "sweet cherries" - and you could do that (or use dried sweet cherries instead of the cranberries, that'd work, too) but I don't want to use sweet cherries as "sweet filler". Apples, however, being fleshy and easy to come by, get used as "sweet filler" all the time. So I've put the apple back into this recipe and I figure it'll work, even if I'm not 100% confident about the apple/mint (not to be confused with Apple Mint) combination).