Wednesday, August 4, 2010

A busy day yesterday...

SO BUSY that I didn't even take any pictures!!!!!! {{sorry}}

From 8:00 - noon, I actually quilted! I loaded up a quilt of MIL's on the frame and finished 'er up and then loaded another. I have 4 in total from MIL that I need to quilt up; all are just little crib quilts, so they quilt up kinda quick. However, the one currently loaded may take a bit more time because I broke away from pantographs and am doing some custom work. {{GASP}}..... I know!!!! Hard to believe, huh???

DH arrived home from work at noon, so it was time to shut everything off and get to work in the kitchen and outside. For the rest of the day, I canned, pickled and canned; spent some time (3 hours) out on the lawn mower, and then spent some more time in front of the canner.....I finally shut the burner off at 11:00! In the end.....{{going from memory}}.....3 quarts & 4 pints green beans, 3 quarts dill pickles, 14 pints bread-n-butter pickles, and 6 half-pints of cucumber relish. {{yeah, the list doesn't sound all the impressive---why on EARTH did it take so peckin' long then?????}}

The relish is a first for me; found a Cucumber relish recipe online to try out, but chose to cut it in half. I had plenty of cucumbers to make a full batch, but I really don't think I wanted 12 half-pints of relish in the event I didn't like it. DH gave the thumbs-up, though.

I think I'm DONE with cucumbers, though!!! Green beans are just startin' to really come and they are so easy to can, just takes a bit more time because they need to be canned under pressure. We ran out of green beans REALLLLLL early last year, so I'll can as many as we get. Next year, we need to plant a few more plants; I think we have about 12 plants out there that actually lived :0(

Anyway...the day is pretty open today with NO CANNING on the schedule!!!! :0) Cleaning-schmeaning! I think I'll be downstairs for much of the day.

Happy Wednesday!

3 comments:

Andra Gayle said...

I am so impressed with all the growing and canning you do. I would love to have a property where I could grow my own stuff. Yesterday I came home from the piano teacher's house with 3 bags of peaches and will probably get more next week. I am planning to drive to my cousin's house-7 hours away-soon to get all the black eyed peas I can cram into my vehicle. Both of those can just be put in bags and frozen though-no canning for me.Today it is off to set up the classroom!

Amanda said...

Canning seems to be such an American thing to do. We make pickles and preserves of course but we don't call it canning. Do you actually use tin cans, or glass jars like I do? Mostly, wherever possible, I tend to freeze surplus vegetables. Thought I'm having problems with a surplus of rather large courgettes, marrows really, so I need to find some time to make some marrow and ginger jam with them I think. I don't really grow enough to go in for wholesale preserving though, just enough to keep us in vegetables throughout the summer and enough onions, leeks, turnips and swede to see us through the winter, but then I have to buy whatever else we need.

scraphappy said...

I am much in awe of your canning extravaganza. It must be very satisfying to be able to keep yourself in canned goods through the long winter. I'm sure cleaning will get its turn eventually. There always seem to be so many more appealing things to do.