Saturday is a canning day

Working full time during the week so do most of my canning on Saturday.  Busy day here so I had no help today. Spent 2 hours out in the garden collecting and pulling weeds.  Then I started the boiling water and got the ice water ready.  Filled the pan with boiling water with tomatoes and then switched them over to the ice water and started peeling them.  Keep at it until I thought I'd scream!  Part of the problem was with the tomato plants I bought this year.  I bought four 6 packs.  1 of cherry tomatoes, 1 of Amish Paste and two packs of Rueters Canning Tomatoes.  Once the plants grew big and started putting on fruit I knew I had a problem.  The seedling had been mismarked and packed wrong.  I ended up with 1 Amish Paste plant and 2 Rueters and all the rest were cherry tomatoes!  Now 1 cherry tomato plant isn't enough but 2 or 3 is about right and 6 would of been ok as I could of taken them to work and leave on the lunch table.  But 21 plants was pretty overwhelming!  #1 I wasn't going to have enough tomatoes to can!.  #2 No way could any one at home or work or even church deal with this many cherry tomatoes!   So today I canned them!  Today's harvest had a about 5 regular tomatoes and 2 Amish paste and all the rest were Cherry tomatoes.  They were pretty tedious to peel but I got them all done and filled 7 quarts and 1 pint jar so guessing it was worth the effort to deal with them. 

Now I have to deal with cucumbers.  I've made dills, dill slices, sweets and bread & butter sliced pickles.   Asked my family which ones they want more of and their eyes lit up!  Yes they get to eat a jar of each so they can let me know!  Dills & bread & butter pickles I can start tonight and can up Monday before I go to work.  Sweets take 4 days so I'd have to can those up Wednesday before going to work. 

My Amish neighbor has apricots coming in Tuesday afternoon so I'll send my husband over to get us a box.  Will can part and dry part.  Will get 2 boxes of peaches on Friday Morning.  So I can can and dry those over the next weekend.

Hope you are able to fill your pantry shelves this lovely harvest season!    It's hard work but so worth the effort!  I know what we'll be eating this winter instead of wondering how much GMO garbage is working it's way into my home!

Have a great weekend!
Cherlynn