New adventures in domestication!

I spent all day Wednesday doing  freezer meals. Here is my post about that with an update. I also ran to the store and got two bag of peas and a big bag of peanuts to freeze. Klint came home Wednesday and said that he was going to get some corn from a manager at his office. I told him that was great because we love corn and we new it would be good to have some in the freezer! He called me Thursday and said he had the corn and it was a lot. Well, in my mind I pictured 40 to 50 ears of corn. What greeted me when I got home was a bag with almost 90 ears of corn. Here is a picture of about half of it!

So for the rest of Thursday I dedicated my time to research on corn and freezing it...fun day! So I knew Friday that not only was I putting up corn, but I also putting up peas I had bought the day before. When Klint came home that night, he had another surprise...Tomatoes! It was way more than what we could eat so we looked up how to can our own food which turned into another all night research project and after three calls to my grandma we decided we could do it....maybe!

Klint decided to take off Friday morning and help me with the corn and the whole canning process. We shucked corn and blanched our peas (which I had done before). Klint also froze some green peanuts that I bought when I got the peas.  Here is a picture of our clean corn and our peas!

Now, I do my peas a little different from some people. My grandma showed me how to do my peas and she said to keep the juice you cooked them in and put them back in. She said some people just put water and that is fine, but I like it with the juice from the peas. (I guess that is different. Let me know if it isn't.) We got eight bags of corn on the cob and two quart size bags of cream corn.

That night we made our first batch of jarred food...Salsa! I found a fairly easy recipe online and it made six jars. The salsa is really mild and taste so fresh. We had extra and I just put it in the fridge. We were a little worried because they didn't seal like I thought they would. I went to the freshpreserving.com website and reread again about making sure the jars seal. Once I pulled them, they sealed almost instantly! So happy!

Saturday we got up and went to the farmer's market and got more tomatoes, some banana peppers, and okra. We cut the okra and froze it. We used the banana peppers and made pepper relish. We used part of the tomatoes to make tomato relish and the rest will be used to make stewed tomatoes! I have called my grandma a few times just to verify certain things about canning and she has answered so patiently and everytime she says "It is so good you are putting up food for your family." and I can hear the pride in her voice! It is a good feeling!

Salsa, pepper relish, and tomato relish

My point in writing this is to say, don't be scared! Try new things. We are amateurs at this and have had some pretty good luck! Just follow the instructions and go with it!

I had to post a picture of what our sweet baby girl did the whole time we worked. She has been the best!

She colored and played so quiet! We are now having movie night with her!


Happy canning!