We have been really busy lately canning and freezing all our leftover vegetables that we bring home from the market.  The last 4 or 5 weeks we have been canning every week.

 This weeks canned foods:  Pasta Sauce, Tomatillo Salsa, and Canned Chicken

 

Here is most, but not all, of our canned foods.

Okra, zucchini relish, garlic scapes, tomato juice, corn, collard rolls, tomato soup, pickled beans, zucchini pickles, perch, pears, beans, pasta sauce, turkey stock, vegetable stock, chicken stock, yard long beans, summer squash pickles, zucchini bread and butter pickles, pickle relish, jellies, and more!

We still have to can some apples, more collard rolls, more pasta sauce, more perch, turkey stock after Thanksgiving, salsa, garlic, and I might try to can some radishes and turnips this year. 

Lots of Canning and Freezing

I have been busy lately canning and freezing.  I think I am starting to run out of jars, and I still have to can some pears, collard rolls (just like cabbage rolls but with collards), and have not even canned any tomatoes yet.  I will also have to can some more turkey stock after Thanksgiving.

Last week I canned some beans, made zucchini pickles, summer squash pickles, zucchini relish, and also froze some zucchini pancakes.  Can you guess what I have had a lot of lately?

Beans during the process of being canned.

 Zucchini Relish

Summer Squash Pickles & Canned Beans

Today was more zucchini pickles, froze 7 bags of shredded zucchini for zucchini bread, made two pear pies, made zucchini fries, and prepped some zucchini for bread and butter pickles which will be canned tomorrow (they have to soak overnight in salt).

 Zucchini Pickles

Shredded Zucchini, Some Zucchini Fries (the rest are in the oven), Pear Pies, and the Zucchini Pickles

Tomorrow I will be canning the zucchini bread and butter pickles, freezing beans, freezing peppers, and can some pears.  I am so tired of dealing with zucchini, but my plants are slowing down so I should not have much more zucchini to deal with, it should be time to move on to tomatoes.

This was the first year that I have tried canning zucchini, and I am very happy with how everything has turned out.  The zucchini pickles look just like cucumber pickles, and actually taste very similar to cucumbers too.  I ate my first jar of zucchini pickles in just a couple days, when it does not last long then it has to be good.

Homemade Turkey Stock

A few days after Thanksgiving I made some homemade turkey stock.  If you have a pressure canner, it is really pretty simple, and does not really take as long to make as I thought it would.  I followed the instructions on the National Center for Home Food Preservation site.  You can check it out Here. 

Basically what I did was place the turkey carcass with most of the meat removed in a large pot covered it with water and added about 4 stems of my celery (cut up) and about 4 or 5 medium size carrots (cup up) to the pot.  I boiled it for about 1 hour, until the meat could easily be removed from the bones.  Then I removed the meat and added back into the pot with the broth.  Then filled the jars with broth along with the meat and veggies, and filled within 1" from the top.  Then pressure canned it for 25 minutes.  In the end I ended up with 12 pint jars of turkey broth.

 Homemade Turkey Broth

So the other day I used the first jar of turkey broth and made some rice.  Here is what I used:

1 pint jar of turkey broth (about 1 1/2 cups broth, I used the meat and veggies from in the broth also)

1 1/2 cups water

2 tbls. butter

2 cups white rice

4 or 5 medium size turnips (skinned and cut into cubes)

I mixed everything together in the pot and cooked it according to the package directions.  When it was done I added a little more butter and some salt, and I think it came out pretty good.