We have been SO blessed this year with the amount of produce I've been able to buy/been given. I love knowing that this winter we will have plenty of blueberries, strawberries, peaches, peach jam, diced tomatoes and salsa in our freezer and in our basement.
I went blueberry picking twice and got 4 gallons. The blueberries are all organic and pesticide free and are currently sitting in my freezer just waiting to be used in smoothies, oatmeal, muffins-yu name it! Isaiah eats them frozen like they are candy :)
I was able to buy 50 pounds of peaches that were seconds quality and I made most of them into peach jam and peach syrup. The syrup is to die for and is incredibly delicious over pancakes!!
Before the process began!
Hot water to be able to get the skins off.
Cold water to make it even easier.
These are the two huge bowls that contained the peach purée for the jam.
The stove was quite busy :) tomato sauce simmering, peaches cooking down for the jam and then peach syrup heating up.
For the syrup, I used my blender to make it. It was done in approximately 10 seconds. This blender is a beast.
After a long day, I was finally finished. Definitely worth all of the work!!
Two days later I set to work on a ton of tomatoes my mother in laws neighbor gave us!
Her garden is simply amazing and she uses it to bless others by giving away TONS of the produce!
This is only a fraction of the garden.
Mhmmm! She gave us all of these tomatoes, some bell peppers, and some delicious red potatoes!!! We were and are so grateful.
The tomatoes took a very long time to prep-but thanks to a little boy sleeping in until 10 am, I got everything ready to can.
(While isaiah watched Frozen :) )
The tomatoes were a particularly messy process-and I honk my floor is still somewhat sticky because of them :)
Tomatoes were everywhere :)
I was able to get 24 quarts of diced tomatoes and I have a bag or two of tomato sauce in the freezer.
I was just given a few more tomatoes and I plan to can some salsa this evening with them.
Maybe one day I'll have a garden to where we can grow our own winter supply of food. And summer dinners. That would be awesome. For now, I'll just dream about it :)
