On Being Prepared-Summertime

A friend of mine worked out a deal with a local grower that if she purchased more than 50 dozen ears of corn, she could get it at a discounted price. So this morning, we shucked, blanched, and cut the kernels off of dozen and dozens of ears. Nancy had it down to a science, so we had a little assembly line going. She even had little blocks of wood with a nail sticking up to hold the cob in place while we cut. Brilliant!
I ended up with 10 bags of corn to freeze. It is SO yummy, and about 40% cheaper than buying the corn myself...plus it is preservative and additive free! I just want to thank Nancy for inspiring me to preserve more of the foods I have grown myself. She is a rockstar! She even makes her own cheese-who does that anymore?! She has been so generous to share her knowledge and her water bath canner with me.

So if you haven't guessed,

I am focusing on food preservation for the summer months.

So far, this summer, I have canned a total of:
5 pints of blueberry syrup
5 pints of blueberry jam
14 quarts of garlic and dill pickles
36 pints of homemade salsa
7 quarts of whole tomatoes.

Aren't they so pretty?!

It is missing something orange. If only my peach tree would give us something. One peach. That's all I ask. I still want to do another batch of tomatoes, freeze basil in olive oil, more pesto, more bell peppers, make my own baby food (gonna wait until Corbin gets closer to baby food eating age to do that), applesauce, and jalepeno jelly. We'll see how much of that list I actually get around to doing!

Remember all those green beans? Hillary and I canned 14 quarts and I blanched and froze the rest in 5 gallon ziplock bags. Thanks to Sherry-who I bought the canning jars from in the first place-for lending me several home gardening and food preservation books and her pressure canner.

I have 1 bag of frozen green peppers that I hope to add to.
I am drying cayenne pepper
Now I have 10 bags of corn
I've also made 2 huge batches of Elena's Incredible Pesto Sauce, divied them up into 6 small bags (enough for 1 small box of bowtie pasta in each bag) and froze it...but I am going to have to make more, because it's already gone. Homemade pesto is a yummy crowd pleaser, filling, and very frugal if you grow your own basil. A box of bowtie pasta is what? $1.50 give or take? If you grow your own basil, the pesto sauce is only the cost of 1/4 c olive oil, a handful of walnuts (I buy the little $1 bags in the baking section of WM, you can use pine nuts, too), and 2 cloves of garlic. Add a sliced tomato from the yard and some steamed zucchinni and ta da! Dinner. So Delicious. So cheap.

Wow, this post is really boring. Congrats if you made it to the end. I guess the only reason I blog about stuff like this is so my kids won't grow up and ask me what I did all day (other than take care of them, of course). Plus, there is something about posting goals online that drives me to actually do them.