Canning It Forward: International #CanItForward Day 8/1

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!