I Need A Canning Intervention!

I swear, I made a promise to myself, at the beginning of the Summer, that I would NOT doing any canning this year! I had just inventoried the storage room downstairs and realized that 2/3 of the stash of garden produce I had put up from 2009 was still sitting pristinely in their cardboard boxes. That is because I was WAY out of control in 2008 and basically canned anything that would hold still for 5 minutes; leaving a surplus! I really had good intentions, and I held out for quite awhile but................

• Bountiful Baskets had such great deals on peaches, and pears, that my Dear Sweet Friend and I just did a "little" canning to take advantage of great prices and put a few things away.

• Then the stinkin' green beans that I had been lamenting were not going to produce, did just that! So, I thought I'd just put up a few more jars (12 to be exact) of Dilly Beans ( for a grand total of 36 pints of Dilly Beans in the storage room).

• But then Bountiful Baskets offered a fabulous price on a 36 pound box of Gala Apples. My Dear Friend and I really did need to stock up on Apple Pie Filling and it was just one box. In the end we netted 22 quarts.

I am NOT an addict! I can stop any time I want to! Only...........

• Those darn tomato plants that were loaded with green tomatoes that I knew were not going to ripen, did so all at once! Not to mention that those jalapeno pepper plants have been just so industrious, and so have the green pepper plants!

In fact, I don't think my peppers have ever produced anything close to this amount....ever! This is just one weeks picking. I have 2 gallon Ziploc bags of green peppers in the freezer already!

• I just couldn't waste all these beautiful veggies that my garden had worked so hard to produce.
• I would just make one batch of salsa to use them up....or maybe four batches (32 pints later).

• Oh, No! When I drained the tomatoes to makes salsa, it left a gallon and a half of perfectly good tomato juice. Of course, Waste Not Want Not! There was no way I could pour that juice down the drain. Besides, I had all the canning equipment out anyway, so I steam canned 6 quarts of tomato juice.

• Then I still had a pile of jalapenos! Now, if I tried to feed the kid's that many hot peppers all at once, I'm sure something VERY, VERY bad would happen! It would only take a minute to pressure can a few for later. Twelve more 1/2 pints later (bringing the grand total of canned peppers to 35).
• I'm sure I am done now! Oh, wait! Dear Hubby brought me "flowers" in the form of two more boxes of apples from his friend's orchard. Looks like I'll be making applesauce tomorrow.....and what about all those yummy beets still in the garden.....and the carrots, we can't waste those!

Hello, my name is Tightwad Mom and I have an addiction problem...........!