Monday, October 14, 2013

What's in your canning kettle?

I have been enjoying a little bit of domestic time now that the wedding is done and the flowers are no longer on the top of my list.  I will post pictures, but I promised my daughter that she gets first dibs on posting wedding pics.  She wants to share them with the florist first, who was absolutely terrific in working with us.

I thawed out the eight gallon bags I stowed in the freezer and made my spaghetti sauce this weekend.  When you start from frozen, it takes a bit more time.   Little by little I got them in the electric roaster and cooked them down.  A bit of this and a bit of that and 24 hours later, I had 10 quarts and seven pints of spaghetti sauce and an additional four pints of chili sauce.  I made a modification to the spaghetti sauce and added two tablespoons (minimum) of red wine vinegar to each quart of sauce to raise the acidity.  I water bath canned them instead of pressure canning with the increased acidity.  I have no meat in my sauce when I can it.  All should be good according to my research on the adaptation.  The chili sauce was in the Ball Book.  The smell of this cooking was delicious with all the spices and vinegar cooking down for several hours.

I also had a few pounds of pears from the neighbor.  We ate several fresh, but they start to over-ripen quickly so they are now pear chutney which I made from The Pickled Pantry.   This recipe also smelled so good as it was bubbling on my stove top.

I have windfall apples from my sister chilling in the frig for a new batch of applesauce.  Don't you just love autumn?!

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