Canning Season!

As part of my effort to eat less commercially processed food, I've been helping my mom can a bunch over the last couple of weeks. She has an apple tree and a peach tree and we also bought a couple boxes of tomatoes from a local farmer since my dad at all of the ones she grew. :) Olga has been helping us as part of a personal progress goal.

This was the hardest part. Our apples weren't in the best shape, and neither was the blade on the apple peeler so we ended up doing about half by hand. And it took FOR-EV-ER!

Before we filled the jars with fruit, we had to sterilize them.

The entire process reminded me of my cousin Ali's wedding. Her sealer likened the canning process to eternal marriage. First, you must purify the jars and lids (our bodies), then the food going inside those jars (our spirits). Then the jars are sealed. If there are any impurities inside the jar the food (marriage) will go bad. But as long as the jars and their contents are pure, they will remain pure.

 We did apples first and they were definitely the hardest most labor intensive. I'm not huge on cooked apples but they turned out delicious.

Next we did tomatoes. Sorry, no pictures. Those were the easiest but very messy. I can't wait to make some chili with them! Yum...

Today we did peaches.
Side note: Olga has the spunkiest fashion sense. She loves the 80's. She's wearing bright blue skinny jeans, a comic strip belt, white suspenders and a ninja turtles t-shirt. Gotta love her.

Little M loves, Loves, LOVES peaches so we will be sure to take advantage of her grandmas peach trees (Al's mom had one too).

Ta-Da! A yummy treat and an expensive way to build up that food storage!