Abundance

I feel like the gardens are producing late this year. I know my tomatoes are late. I've canned about a dozen jars here and there of spaghetti sauce. Now that the weather has dried up and stayed warm, the tomatoes are really coming on. So I've been busy canning. My problem is the best time for me to do it is after supper. That means some pretty late nights!

I ordered a 20+ pound pear add on with my Bountiful Baskets this time. I remember always having home canned pears at Grandma Mary's and loved them. Granted, I didn't grow these in my backyard but they'll still taste better than the ones from the store!! I used honey in one batch of syrup and sucanat in the other (that's the darker ones). I read that you can leave the peel on the pear and cut them into chunks and can. So I tried a couple jars that way. We'll see how we like them. I started around 8pm and finished what I had jars for around midnight. Of course there were a few interruptions in there! I still have probably 5 more quarts' worth of pears to can. 

We also got quite a few bananas in this week's baskets. They actually ripened a lot faster than usual, which is fine with me...banana bread! My absolute favorite. So I made 3 loaves of that tonight, too. 

My tomato plants are finally producing quite a bit. Still haven't gotten what I had planned on out of them, but it's better than nothing considering how our weather has been this season!! I made about 15 pints of plain tomato sauce with these. And as soon as I finished these, Aaron went out and filled the bucket back up!! I told Aaron if we ever build our own house, I want a canning kitchen with a great big stove and big, open counter space. He looked at me like I was crazy. It just completely takes over my kitchen, which is why I usually wait until after supper to do it!

Baskets full of goodness Saturday morning!! Mmmmmm!