canning and freezing

My family always were food preservers.

Mom canned, both grandmas did too. When our daughters were home we canned a lot of anything we could find. It was good.

Then we went to Texas to go graduate school, and there was not time, and not much affordable fruit, so we ate from the grocery store.

When we came back to Idaho the last time our orchard was starting to produce. We did not and do not get a crop each year, so when we have a crop we put it away as much as possible.

This was an interesting year. Some of our trees were loaded. I canned 42 pints of apricots (I remember when we often canned in 2 quart jars!) and froze 25 quarts of peaches. The other peach tree will ripen next week and much of that will go in the freezer as well.

Apricots are on in mid summer when it is hot, for the last few years I have set up a table in our back yard, put my trusty camping stove on it and canned outside. I even did most of the prep work outside.

Next month it will be grape juice.

A couple of weeks ago we went to CostCo with friends (they are members, we are not) and I got a flat of strawberries. We ate from it for a while, but there was a lot of good things to eat tight then.

So I checked on line for recipe for frozen strawberry jam. I got 8 half pints of very fine jam. It was easy and fun.

Miriam could not remember her doing frozen jam and she was sure it was the dumbest things she had ever seen.

But on my fresh bread, even she can’t resist that jam!