A City Life For Me

2 days :: 3 nap times :: 100 tomatoes :: 2 burning hands :: a very hot kitchen :: 1 broken jar :: 1 tired Mommy But I got 16 quarts, 4 pints, and 2 half pints to show for it!

I never got around to canning salsa last year, so I was excited to give it a try this year.  I was able to find a box of canning tomatoes at the Farmer’s Market for only $10, and the onions & peppers cost another $10.  So far I have been able to squeeze this extra money out of my grocery budget.   Yesterday I chopped the onions, green peppers (2 of Ben’s favorite ingredients…JJJKJT), banana peppers, and chili peppers.  I had to roast the chili peppers first.  In Colorado we buy them already roasted, but here in Virginia they have never heard of that.  I just put them in the oven for 25 minutes at 425 degrees.  This is what they looked like:   I probably should have bought more, but I didn’t know exactly how many I needed, or how many batches of salsa I would get out of my tomatoes.  Ben likes spicy salsa, and I prefer the sweet.  I don’t have a stock pot big enough to do a double batch at one time, so I ended up doing two separ...

Canning Day 1 actually turned into the only canning day.  I decided to go ahead and do up the peach jam while I had all of the pans and supplies out.  It made for what felt like a really long day on my feet.  When the last jars of jam were removed from the canner, and the dishes were washed, I jumped into a nice warm bath to soak my feet.  They were so tired!   We ended up with 11 half pints of less sugar blueberry jam, 4 pints of regular peach jam, and 3 pints of less sugar peach jam.  We also had enough blueberries to freeze for three pies and two batches of pancakes.  Ben should be happy for a while!    I was blessed to be taken out to dinner, spur of the moment, last night.  Ben came home and saw everything I had done and took me to the salad bar at Ruby Tuesday.  I have been craving salad and crushed ice recently!  Then we got a free ice cream at cold stone with his birthday coupon.  What a day!

Ben got off early on Friday, so we headed down to Knott’s Island, NC (about an hour away) to pick peaches at the local orchard.  They were supposed to be ready this week, and I wanted to make a batch of peach jam.  When we arrived around 1pm we were told that a lot of pickers came in the morning, and they were out of peaches!  They had a couple of 10 pound bags already picked that we could purchase.  We bought one, though I am not too thrilled with the quality of the peaches.  Hopefully it will make some good jam.   Having struck out in the peach department, we stopped by the blueberry patch on the way home and hit the jackpot.  They were on sale for $1.76 per pound for pick your own blueberries, and they were ripe & sweet.  We spend about an hour picking and ended up with almost two buckets – I think it’s around 10 pounds.  Ben’s favorite is blueberry pie, blueberry pancakes, and I want to try some jam.    I spent the morni...