food food food

Husband here with pictures for your enjoyment.

Finally got around to getting the images into the picture host we use.

So here in full technicolor is the fruits of one weekends labor..

To start with the peaches.

We did these preserves and while the recipe was good I thought the fruit broke up to much. They seem a couple of hard stirs short of jam. We only did one batch of them as this whole canning deal is new and we are just getting our feet wet.



Next up is the peach jelly. While we had only one recipe ready we did two varieties sort of.

The basic peach jelly is this.



And several smaller 1/4 pints to give at Christmas.



As we were about done with the jellies I grabbed some cinnamon and poured in a good amount. For me peaches always bring to mind peach cobbler at my grandmothers with a heavy cinnamon topping on the crust.



We also did several sizes of jam.



So that was the end of the peaches for the weekend.

Now comes the pickles

We started with Harkema pickles.

We did a mix of long sliced and whole pickles in quart jars.



And then a bunch of sliced pickles in pints jars.



In the same book we found a basic "quick dill" recipe and tried our hand on it.



And the quick dill kosher version. All that means is that we added garlic.



My wife and I have for many reasons a desire to use hand powered tools. While I agree that some things are so much easier with electric we want to use our hands.

So with that in mind we recently purchased this food mill from amazon.



For peaches it was dang near useless. The slimy little slices just rotated so we went electric. But on the berries of the week following it worked superbly. It even helped sift out some of the blackberry seeds.

So that is the weekend loot for us.

I will post some nice pictures of the berries and plums items we made when I get some photographs of them.

With all of the jams and jellies we have made in the last month I was sure we had enough to last the year. WRONG!!!! My wife and I popped some butter biscuits into the oven last night and by the time we were done eating them we had wiped out about half of a half pint of peach jam.

Since it was the first real usage of our home production I can say easily that WE NEED TO MAKE MORE!!!