Friday, August 20, 2010

Can Much?

We've been doing a lot of canning lately. I think we have around:
40 pints of salsa
40 pints of green beans
8 quarts of tomato sauce
6 pints of peaches
10 4 oz jars of plum preserves
6 half pints of peach butter
7 pints of chili

I've also been busy restocking my freezer with chicken stock and broth. I'm not going to bother canning any stock right now because we go through it quickly. I would have like to have made more peach butter, but my kids are crazy for peaches and eat five or more in one sitting. My first batch of plum preserves was a little more like plum candy (oops, need to work on the gelling point), but I used some of it in the middle of homemade doughnuts this morning and it was a hit with the kids. I think I'll also use it in a sort of plum turnover too.

In addition to our beast of a pressure cooker, we were given a 6 quart pressure cooker. I am very intimidated by pressure cookers (my husband cans the low acid stuff), but put on my big girl pants and used it to cook a pot roast. The result was better than Christmas! Actually, I said it was better than the birth of my children, but it was an unbelievably tender roast. The pot roast went from frozen to fork tender in 40 minutes. Not to sound like an infomercial, but that pressure cooker will completely transform the way I cook for my family. I can be lazy forgetful and not thaw anything and still have it on the table by 6!

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