Fruit and canning,,,,,

Greetings!!

I had bought a lot of fruit at the market recently and yesterday I made some blueberry and strawberry syrups.  After that I cut up melons and added other fruit to make a couple of huge fruit bowls to much on this week.  I was really surprised at how good and ripe the fruit was.  Nice and sweet tasting!!

I got 3 1/2 pints of each flavor out of the berries I had.  So tomorrow we are going to have pancakes and open up the half pints and try the syrup.  I wish I had bought more berries and made a lot more syrup, but this will do for now.  I have some pictures below.

Today I am going to start a small batch of sauerkraut.  This is my first time making sauerkraut so I did not want to make too big of a batch in case I mess it up some how, LOL.  I have about 10 lbs of cabbage which I will slice into thin shreds, then mix with canning or pickling salt.  That then gets pressed into a crock and brine added if necessary.  Enough to make sure the cabbage is covered.  The brine is salt and water, boiled then cooled.  The cabbage might make enough of its own brine and I might not need to add more.  We shall see.

The crock is then covered with a cheese-cloth and a plate and weighted down to keep the cabbage compressed.  It takes 3 to 6 weeks to ferment.  I need to skim the bubbles off every day and press the cabbage down some more.  Once the fermenting is complete it will be time to can it.  I'll try to remember to take pictures as I go along and post about my first attempt at making sauerkraut.  If all goes well I will be making a lot more in the future.

Next week I plan on canning sweet corn and carrots if I can get a good bargain on them.  I really want to stock up on the canned goods in my pantry so each week I hope to be doing at least one batch of something.  There is nothing like having a good supply of delicious home-canned food on hand.

This morning I was reading about canning breakfast sausage patties.  I have canned a lot of meat over the years but never breakfast sausage.  So needless to say I will try a small batch of that as well.  If it comes out as good as it sounds, I will make more.  I'll keep you posted on when I do that as well.

Do you have any favorite foods you can?  I would love to hear from you.  I always like trying new recipes.

Until next time,,,,,,,  Blessings!!

Sorry folks, I have been trying to upload the pictures for a few days now and every time I do it shuts Windows down for some reason.  Not sure what is going on but I guess I will have to post pictures another time.