It's that time of year again.. My kitchen is full of canning stuff again. This past week there were canning jars stacked everywhere for washing. The big pots are up from the basement, and I'm sorting through the screw bands and looking for that new box of lids I bought last spring on clearance. The water bath canner was hauled out and fired up. My largest colander and biggest bowls are found. The jar lifter, funnels, and tongs are at the ready. The Canning Season Has Begun..
I love it. I don't love the way my kitchen will look for the next couple of weeks, but I do love the canning part. I love the baskets and grocery bags full of produce that appear on the table every day. I love the red of the tomatoes, the Yellow and white of our Sugar and Cream sweet corn. The green of the beans. All of the colors pop when they have been canned. They all look brighter and happier somehow.
I love the smells that waft through the house with each batch of salsa, speg. sauce, green tomato mincemeat, and pickled beets. I love when my kitchen is full of canning jars.
Today I will wash up and get ready to make the next batch of salsa. I think with the next picking of green beans I'll be canning some of those too. I still have jars of canned tomatoes and tomato juice left from last year. I may even make up one batch of speg. sauce if I get really ambitious.
Our garden is much smaller these days. Now we plant tomatoes, peppers, green beans, some squash, and maybe corn. It's more difficult for husband to run the tiller and work the hoe. It takes me a little longer to carry the pots up, But I can't imagine not canning some of it. The idea that later this winter I will open a jar of beans or salsa is wonderful. It will bring back the memories of the summer. The bright colors and familiar smells will elicit those great memories of just a few months before. Then sometime in January the first seed catalog will arrive and husband and I will start talking about what we want to put out in the garden this summer. I think this next year I'm going to ask for beets. I'm also going to ask for a few extra tomato plants. I will have finished up the green tomato ketchup/relish and the green tomato mincemeat. I can smell that mincemeat cooking already. It's wonderful.
Enjoy your day. I'm going to go wash up a few more jars. I think I will can some green beans.
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