Canning Planning 2009

My wife and I were just discussing our plans for this year, so here they are so far. Of course we've done a number of things so far, but the cheap stuff is just about to start now at the market, so we have to set our priorities to get things kicked into high gear! If you are doing this yourself, don't forget the golden rule : only can what you will eat!

This year promises to be our biggest year yet, probably by a longshot. And the number one thing on our list is of course tomatoes - both just canned up on their own, and also done up into both pasta/pizza sauce, and salsa. We still have not gone back to review our notes from last year to estimate how much we'll need, but I'm sure it is going to be 7 or 8 bushels at least.

Another big one this year is going to be zucchini because our CSA planted a lot of it, and we already have it piling up! So we have a few different relish recipes in mind and will have to review them to see what's what. Another thing we do with zucchini is grate it and then freeze it in muffin tins, and then pop the frozen mounds out of the tins and vacuum seal them. Works really great, and you use these in baking to make things like chocolate cake a lot healthier. I'm also going to experiment with a bit of grated zucchini to see if I can just can it in jars to use like the frozen stuff. As with all experiments that venture off into the unknown, it will be done in small amounts, and will be done according to my principles of "Guerrilla Canning" (note to self: still have not written that article on Guerrilla Canning).

A big mistake we've done in years past is to can up a lot of both fruit and veggies. This is a mistake for us because we generally do not use a lot of canned veggies like carrots, string beans and the likes. Or canned fruit, either. Though I have already canned some carrots this year, and will likely can a bit more because I want to force myself to increase my intake over the winter, we also came up with a better way of doing these sorts of things. In fact, it involves something I've been hounding my wife for years to get on board with - canning up curried vegetables. We are both huge fans of curries, but she is the master cook in that area, so it is not something I can really undertake on my own. Otherwise I'd have done it long ago. But like everything, it is not a good idea until it is HER good idea, and about an hour ago she "came up with it". "Instead of canning veggies to eventually use in recipes, let's make the recipes and then can them". So it's a done deal! We are going to do curried carrots, zucchini, potatoes and probably more. Unrelated to the harvest, I also want to do up some curried chick peas because I recently bought a whole bunch of organic ones from our organic foods co-op.

And instead of canned fruits this year, we are going to do a whole bunch of fruit leathers. They actually end up being a lot healthier than just the fruit alone especially for the boys - because we load them up with fresh veggies, and the boys don't get enough veggies. All the ones we make have a lot of carrots and string beans. The new dehydrator is proving to be very handy in this area.

I also want to do a lot of dehydrated fruit, and even a lot of dehydrated turnip since my experiment there turned out so well. Dried turnip ends up getting really sweet and is just fantastic as a snack!

There is also talk of doing up our own applesauce - or most likely fruit sauce made from apples and other fruit. We go through a lot of the commercial stuff over the winter, for some reason. It won't likely be any cheaper doing it ourself, but we'll feel better about it anyway.

Will post updates as we move along - no recipes yet. Just ideas. Lots and lots of ideas - and fortunately, most of them are good ones!

Woo-hoo!