By now, I’m sure that you are well aware that I have a backyard garden. Yes? You’re also aware, if you’ve rifled through my blog archives that I kind of like canning. I don’t get to do it as often as I want because my bounty has never been as large as it has been this go round, and honestly, we were running out of room for EVERYTHING in the old house. Canning love included. In honor of International #CanItForward Day Ball Canning sent me a great package of mason jars and a book of inspiration to get started, but I just HAD to start with two things. Pickles and Pasta Sauce. Yes. We’re not eating them together though, so don’t get any ideas.
Well. That has changed. How cute are those purple heritage quart sized jars? And they are the wide mouth jars so I don’t have to struggle with treating myself to a pickle every now and then.
I’m going to be a canning fool for the rest of the summer, and I’ve already started on a batch of pickles. Currently I’m trying two different styles. Fermentation, and a straight pickling with vinegar. I’ll explain that later, but I’m giving myself Ms. Frizzle goosebumps over here. The fermentation process of the first batch of pickles has my heart going pitter patter because they smell just like the corner store pickles from back in the day. The ones that you get out of the barrels/big glass jars. The ones that were so sour your face would ball up? Yep, those. And they are beautiful when they are in their jars.
Once these babies are ready to eat, I’ll share the recipe in another post, but I do want to share that TOMORROW. TOMORROW. TOMORROW #CanItForward is happening, and Ball Canning will be hosting an entire 5 hour lineup of guests who will share all of their canning with a theme of Made From Here. The day starts at 11 am EST and ends at 4 pm.
Special guests include:
- Food in Jars‘ Marisa McClellan of Philadelphia, PA
- Hoosier Homemade’s Liz Latham of LaPorte, IN
- Southern Plate‘s Christy Jordan of Huntsville, AL
- Yesterday on Tuesday‘s Malia Martine Kalinsky of Seattle, WA
- Special feature: Rebecca Sullivan – preserving in Australia!
- Chef Sarah Page, Jarden Home Brands
Share what you make with #canitforward and #madefromhere on any social network.
To get a head start on the events for tomorrow, I loaded up on Roma tomatoes from the grocery store (since mine aren’t ripe yet) and got set to make some pasta sauce. I’m just going to give you a glimpse of that too, as I want to give you all that in a full blog post as well. That process was a little bit more in-depth than I thought it would be, but I can’t say that I didn’t enjoy it. There are things that I would do differently the next time of course, but for a first time, I’d say it was success.
Ball Canning is also giving one of my readers a case of Ball Canning Jars to get started or continue on your canning journey! To enter, all you have to do is let me know what you love canning away. So far, I’ve done vanilla extract, pickles, apple butter, apple sauce, blueberry jam, strawberry preserves, and pumpkin butter.
Contest is closed
Congratulations to Paula Hafner!
Those tomatoes look soooo good! I haven’t tried vanilla extract! I’d like to do that!
I need to come try those pickles.
My grandma used to make homemade pickles all the time.
There is nothing like them,
I love canning jam the best. Especially raspberry because I’m the only one who really eats and it’s my favorite so yummy!
I’ve done pickles before – just vinegar ones so I’ll be curious to hear about the fermenting! =) Good luck!
I love canning salsa. I’d love to learn how to do vanilla extract, nice idea!
I’ve never done any canning….but I want to try canning tomatoes.
I’ve only tried refrigerator pickles because I’m scared of everything else. Salsa, sauce and raspberry jam are on my list when I get up the nerve!
I absolutely LOVE canning! I am the only one in my family that does it besides my grandparents who taught me. I think it skipped a generation! This year my husband surprised me with a new All American Pressure Canner so now I can get up to 17 pints done at ONE TIME!! woo hoo! With all this canning going on, I have used up most all of my jars.
Some of the things I like to can are green beans, salsa, pesto, garlic basil tomato sauce, cold pack Cherokee tomatoes, pickles, dilly beans, marmalade….the list goes on! It really depends on what I have picked that day from the garden.
I would love to try your Pumpkin Butter! I have one sugar pumpkin that volunteered itself from our compost pile (I threw some sugar pumpkin seeds out last year! and they grew this year!)
Thank you so much Natasha and Ball Canning for offering this giveaway!
Erin,
You’re making sure that I get on it with the pumpkin butter this time around (it’s not shelf stable btw, because of botulism) but it doesn’t last long enough to matter around these parts!
Haha yes Natasha! You totally should! I think it would be a great post especially with fall right around the corner! Thank you for sharing all of your recipes! I enjoyed the pasta sauce one also!
We planted Cherokee tomatoes for the first time this year. We finally have a few ripening. They look good!
They are one of the prettiest tomatoes ever! I pick mine a tad early and bring them in to ripen to be 100% sure I get them before anyone else does (like those little creepy crawlies!)
Bread and butter pickles.
I love canning jam and jellies.
The only thing I have tried canning so far is pickles.
Dill pickles…can never have enough on hand. They are a daily snack in my family. 🙂 Thank you. Do you have a recipe for your vanilla extract? I would love to add that to my preserves shelf.
Hi Jaque, I Do have a recipe for my extract – Here you go! https://housefulofnicholes.com/we%E2%80%99re-making-moonshine
Thanks for stopping by.
I like to can pickles
I love canning strawberry jam and all the veggies from our garden. We always have an abundance and canning feeds us through the winter months.
I always make jam with fresh summer fruit. Later I will make picked peppers.
I have a recipe for zuchinni relish that is wonderful.
I love to can peaches, salsa and green beans.
I love canning pickles and salsa. I just used up the last of my pint jars yesterday, canning pickles. I also will do dry canning when I have a bulk of flour or cornmeal.
Paula, Ive never tried (or even thought about for that matter) dry canning! I have some gem corn that I will be grinding so I’m going to look into this now. Thank you!
What don’t I love canning? Although there is nothing as good as opening a jar of vanilla-strawberry jam in November…
i love canning dill pickles
my sister and i made a batch of plum jam this year. My tree had tons of plums. i hope to do more canning!
I’ve made vanilla extract before. It’s so much more fragrant than the boughten kind. Hot pepper honey and sour cherry jam are two of my other favorites.
Homemade mango jam because my grandmother has a mango tree in her backyard.
I have never canned anything. I am willing to learn!
i really love canning preserves and jams. boysenberry is a fave.
I’m really excited about canning this year. I keep saying I’m going to do it but I haven’t yet. I’m going to start with veggies and extract.
I love canning! My favorites are pickle relish, jam and tomato sauce.
My favorite is hot peppers. I love growing them, and canning them, having them all ready for winter time or better yet, a year later when they’re just that much better 😉 And I like to add carrots with my peppers
I haven’t done any canning but I really want to do it.
I can jellies, jams, roasted tomato sauce – if I can grow it or pick it, I’ll can it. 🙂
Not sure that I LOVE canning, haha, but I’ve done tons of green beans and a few cans of orange marmalade.
So far just tomato.
Gimme some pickles! Someone recently gave me a recipe for some pineapple peach jam that I would love to try and can it. I think it would be great with jalapeños in it.
I love to can fruit preserves and syrups. SO yummy!
Purple mason jars! Yes!!!! I’d probably start with strawberry preserves because YUM!!!!!
Thank You for the giveaway… we can hot peppers, salsa, & marinara sauce !
I love canning green beans.
I love canning. Back when I was a child, we spent days and days canning and it was an oddity then. Then when my husband was in grad school, we bought a house with a huge garden and I canned like a fool. But my husband found home canned foods suspect for the most part. :eyeroll:
Then a few years ago, I started doing some canning again. I love it. And for some reason, it isn’t considered WEIRD anymore but instead so fancy. I am always amused by it becoming trendy. It just makes sense. And there is nothing like your own jam or apple butter or pickles opened in the middle of winter. Summer! In Winter!