Canning Pictorial

The wedding invitations are sent out and I am rewarding myself by doing a short pictorial of the canning we have done this year. First up were the canned peaches, recipe and instructions courtesy of the informative and knowledgeable Mrs. Zen at TennZen.

We then graduated to peach jam, with real vanilla beans. Yumm.....

We canned two different kind of pickles. The one on the left is pickle chips with a "Rodale spice mix" which includes bay leaves, mustard seeds, ginger, coriander, allspice, peppercorns and dried chilis. The one on the right is dill pickle spears with dill, mustard seeds and garlic cloves.
The chips are responsible for banning me from using the (new) mandolin..... I am so smart stupid that I did not feel the need to use the holder that comes with it, and promptly sliced off a nice chunk on one finger. Nice work. Even better was when I, a mere 2 days later, did it again on the next two fingers on the same hand. Apparently I don't like to learn from my mistake, and again felt that I was so smart stupid that I didn't need the holder. Then Sean banned me from the mandolin. But I know where he hid it.

The gracious and wonderful Mrs. JP over at "The Little Dog Shelter in the Holler" shared her recipe for salsa, and Sean and I spent an entire evening making LOTS of salsa with my pinieapple tomatoes. Hence the orange color salsa. We made a medium spicy for me, and a spicy version for him.

Now I just have this to work on. 96 small jars that are waiting on strawberry jam, blueberry jam and maybe a tomato marmalade. These will be the favors for the wedding, and I've found the most adorable little labels to put on the outside.