The Fall Girl Waxes Poetic On Canning and Preserving Food

This was one of those weeks where you blink and it's gone.  Between work and school and a few bad headache days for me, the days flew by.  I can't believe it's Friday night.

Remember when Friday night was for going out and stuff?  These days, I relish staying home.  There's a chill in the air tonight, so I'm happy to be staying in, re-watching Alias with Sarah, and working on my new knitting project.  Well, after she goes out and covers the remaining tomatoes, that is.

As I get older and the climate here goes crazy, I'm finding I love Fall more than ever.  I've always been a Summer girl.  Times are changing.  It'll be a few years before I claim Fall as my favorite season, but I can feel it coming.  After all, if the cozy romantic nights in and wooly sweaters and the click of knitting needles aren't enough, here's one reason to love Fall: Autumn Fruit Jam.  It's a spiced apple, plum, and pear jam, full of festive Autumny goodness.

I figured I'd better process some of our U-Pick apples before Ellis and Sarah ate them all up.  This jam combines the best of the season.  I tripled recipe.

Isn't it beautiful?

At some point, I thought the name of this recipe was Autumn Harvest Jam.  I am going to call mine that, because it's sort of poetic.  Mmmm.  Autumn Harvest Jam.

And we're not done yet.  This week-end I'm hoping to get some applesauce put up and use the last 3 eggplants from the garden.  There's also those green tomatoes to address.  As it stands now, Sarah and I have put up over 250 jars of produce this season--not counting frozen or refrigerated items.  Although we're not into the ranks of our good canning friends Venessa (310) and Anika (307), I feel proud of how far we've come.  This is only our third season canning (although it's our fifth for preserving).  Each year we accomplish more.

I encourage people who haven't tried canning to just jump in.  We started small and have come a long way in a short time.  Our first year, we just made refrigerator pickles.  The second year, we added frozen tomatoes in zip-lock baggies.  Our third year, we put up whole tomatoes in jars.  Last year, we canned jams and relishes and pickles in the water bath canner.  This year, we got all crazy with it and learned to pressure can.  Now we can save pretty much anything for later.  And we did.