What are you canning now?

ducks4you

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Back to canning. I cut up 43 cucumbers--pretty big harvest for planting so late!!--added onions, salted heavily and put them on ice. They sat for 2 days on the cold porch floor until I could process.
The recipe called for 12 cloves of garlic (for 9 cups of cucumbers), but I had 3x that much, so I smashed nearly 40 cloves of garlic this morning.
Here is what they sat in on the porch, in two such containers, and here is rinsing one container's worth, and how I packed them in the jars in the sink.
I was hoping to do all half pints, but I ran OUT of half pints, so I had to process 2 quarts, and it took 3 batches, two quarts and 14 half pints.
The recipe called for 1 cup of sugar for 9 cups of cucumbers, and I added 3 cups for 27 cups of cucumbers (more or less), but it just didn't seem sweet enough. ANother recipe called for more sugar, so I went with 6 cups sugar. THAT smelled sweeter and better!
Photo soon, cooled with the labels.
Family always forgets about eating sweet pickles, and I end up pitching partial quarts, so we'll see if this solves the problem.
 

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ducks4you

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Here is all of the canning from the past few days. The sweet pickles, NOT all labelled, minus 2 that went to DD's house, and 14 half pints of lamb, which was capacity for 1/2 pints in my pressure canner. THIS was the lamb that DD left out, so I cooked it down in my crockpot for "Dog Food", to be added to kibble. Next time I will skim off the fat. Eva isn't complaining.
Sweet pickles, 10-24-23, #4.jpg
 
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ducks4you

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Last harvests of the season were ALL of the sweet peppers, ALL red and green tomatoes and ALL cucumbers.
The cucumber harvest was abou 2/3 the size of the other one. I harvested tiny ones as well as misshapen and large ones. We ate one big cucumber with hamburgers last Saturday and I put aside 5 good sized ones to eat with meals this week.
I had several vines that had sprawled. That meant that some cucumbers had dirt on them even after rinsing. That won't do!
So I used my potato scrubber on them. I cut only the ends of the tiny and small cucumbers. They are now well salted, sitting with ice, and on the porch. I hope to can them tonight and not lose my VERY late harvest!
 

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ducks4you

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Not exactly canning, but processing.
This was my final green bean harvest from Friday. I blanched them, froze on cookie sheets--my 7 1/2 cu ft freezer on the porch is very convenient for this--then bagged them up. Here I am staging them on the dishwasher before moving them to the freezer and yes, one of those IS for pizza.
It's fun to watch them boil for a minute, clean any leftover dirt off and turn bright green!
I have a total of about 3 gallons of frozen green beans to enjoy this winter!
So, Yeah, a late Fall planting was worth it.
 

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ducks4you

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This is the last tomato harvest of 2023. I canned 3 quarts last night.
 

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