Canning Party #2 = 42 jars of homeade deliciousness

I recently posted about different kinds of homesteading type parties you can do with your like minded friends. You may also remember last year when I had my first canning party....

Well yesterday canning party number 2 commenced.

I don't know about you all but during the summer I am busy! Busy tending to the garden, produce, animals, canning, picking etc. Sometimes it is just as easy to freeze some of your bounty and then can it later on in the year when you aren't as busy. This is what we did yesterday.
I had frozen lots of tasty treats that I hadn't gotten around to canning or using up yet. I had figs, strawberries, peppers ( lots of peppers!) some muscadine juice, peaches and blackberries.

I also brought a couple dozen fresh eggs so that we could boil them and peel them. My kids like to eat them throughout the week for a snack and such. In return for the eggs I brought to share, another one of my friends brough me two jars of homeade pesto. Wonderful trade I should say.
 We started with the blackberry jam. I had a few frozen raspberries and blueberries I threw in there too. It turned out Amazing.......

 Next we made some pepper relish. I just threw the end of the season's peppers into a bag and froze them. I had been working with them all season and quite honestly was a bit tired of them, but of course couldn't let them go to waste. I knew I would want them again this winter... so I just defrosted them, cut off the stems and then blended them up.

 The end product ( before cooking) looked like this.

 Then the strawberries. Wow fresh strawberries are delicious. I must say though that these frozen strawberries picked at the peak of ripeness last spring are pretty amazing as well. Oh I can almost taste the almond butter and strawberry jelly sandwiches these will be a part of....

 I just wanted to include a picture of my beautiful daughters helping to peel the eggs. They love to be little helpers..

I don't guess I got a picture of the peaches and figs except in the very top picture, but here is the beautiful jam it made. If you ever have access to figs, get them! They really are one of my favorite fruits. They grow fairly well here in zone 7 as well.

So the end of the day ( actually about 3 hours later) we had the following:

- 12 various size jars of blackberry jam

-11 various size jars of peach/fig jam

-3 pints of strawberry jam ( I used the muscadine juice as a natural sweetner and forwent the sugar)

-10 various size jars of medium pepper relish( we used mainly bell peppers for this)

- 6 various size jars of FIERY pepper relish ( using jalepenos and cayenne)

- 2 dozen hard boiled farm fresh eggs

 

 

We had a great time and made a lot of yummy food to enjoy throughout the year. Happy Homesteading ya'll!

 

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