Mini Canning Gigi Style

I remember my mother canning, mostly green beans.  She froze vegetables more than she canned, but of course that was about 40 years ago, so my memory is probably clouded.  I know my day to day memory gets clouded!  Anyway, it's just my husband and I now.  No need for quart jars of whatever.   I've been canning small or mini batches this year.  I love it.  I'm actually thinking about using a smaller canner for the water baths.  Who knows.  this is my first venture, we shall see.  I love my books for canning, the Ball Blue book and another one I bought a few years ago, Ball Complete book of Home Preserving, 400 delicious and creative recipes for today.

Today I canned 4 pints of basic sauce and 5 pints of sweet crisp pickles.  The sauce took 3 hours, using my fresh from the garden Roma tomatoes.  I used what I had harvested, chopped them in the food processor, processed 3 carrots, julienne style (I added the carrots for the natural sweetness and I have way too many carrots that needed to be used up) and threw it all into my favorite stainless pot and let it boil down for 3 hours.  The sauce is beautiful.   



The pickles  - were started yesterday.  I'm just now finishing them up, it's 10:30 pm.  They were a little more complicated but the recipe is on page 334 of the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving.  I used the Ball recipe, but cut it in half.  My husband likes this idea, that way he's not eating 87 pints of sweet pickles this winter or we're not giving them away for all the holidays!  By the way, they would make a great gift - and besides, it would be difficult at best to re-gift homemade pickles. Now I have a quart of pickle juice I will re-use or save to make dressing with later.

Oh I forgot to mention I put together a batch of banana peppers for Richard he likes them on his sandwiches for lunch.  I boiled them in vinegar and crushed red pepper flakes for 5 minutes, let them cool and re-used the original banana pepper jar that had 2 measly peppers rings left!

It's been a productive Sunday.  The jars are cooling off and the popping continues. More later, I'll share my other pictures and recipes from the Ball Books - Strawberry Vinaigrette, Habanero Gold (YUMMY), Orange Chili Marmalade and 2 varieties of Bread & Butter Pickles later.  I have to work tomorrow.