Processing Apples into Sauce, Butter, and Pectin

From start to finish, this is how I process a crate of apples.  Most  years I get 2 or 3 crates of apples from my mom’s trees, and this year I got some extras from a friend who didn’t have time to process a few boxes of “seconds” apples before they went bad. Empty the [...]

Harvest Season

Now that Fall is here, and it’s time to bring in the last of the garden, things are getting busy! We had the 2 cases of peaches that were canned, and the one that was frozen.     Beets from the garden Oven-dried figs, from Mom’s tree.  I didn’t get a picture, but I’ve dried [...]

How to Can Peaches

To get set: Load your dishwasher full of quart jars, and rings, and start it running. Fill your canner half full of water, and put it on the stove to boil. Take a case of (FREE STONE!) peaches, and put as many as you can in your sink, and fill it up with cool water. [...]

Canning Season Starts

I never had a summer harvest this year- my tomatoes are all hanging, green, on the vine. Tomatillos are still small and supple-skinned. Ground cherries have given us just a few ripe fruits. But across the mountain range, Eastern Washington has sun! I spent yesterday canning two cases of Red Globe peaches (a steal at [...]

What to do with Green Tomatoes

We have a bumper crop of green tomatoes this year.  They were the only crop I managed to plant in a sunny spot, against an east-facing wall, and they grew like mad.  The romas destroyed their flimsy wire cages, they were so heavy with fruit.  The yellow pear and sweet 100′s made little grape-clusters of [...]