Gearing Up for Canning Season

Canning season for me will officially start this weekend. I cannot wait. This year I have added two new pieces of equipment for my canning plans. I bought this used food mill to make tomato sauce, juice, and paste this year. It is just like the one that my Mom and Dad have, and I am looking forward to using it. While I would love to make applesauce with it as well, Dan and I both like the chunkier style applesauce, so that means no food mill for making that. I am looking at perhaps making some berry jam with it as well to chop up the seeds a bit more than just jamming the whole berry. Hopefully I can get some pointers and instructions from my Mom when I go home to visit.

I also went and bought this cherry pitter from the kitchen supply store yesterday. I went to get one off the shelf, as I knew right where they were due to my wanting one since pitting the 5 pounds for cherry creek beer two years ago. When I got to the shelf, to my dismay, there were none there. The was not even a tag for the place where they would be. I walked the rows looking for the pitters, no luck. I finally asked one of the people who worked there and wonderfully they had some in their stock room. I could not have been happier seeing as I would like to kick off canning with cherries this year. I plan on doing 4 quarts and 4 pints of sour cherry pie filling, a batch of sweet cherry jam, a batch of Rainier cherry jam, and if I am feeling crazy, a batch of white cherry jam. I of course will make the obligatory fresh sour cherry pie. Today I have to calculate the number of pounds of each I want to bring home for canning. I am sure it will be a lot. I plan on taking a comfortable chair into the kitchen and putting the new pitter to work.

Today I am off for a jog. It is day three of week two. I hope I can make it through as I am really sore from back to back jogging days and a killer session at Fat Chance last night. You wouldn't think doing the orbit for 45 minutes would make your legs this sore, but it does. Then I am going to do the usual Friday housework of laundry and kitchen cleaning. I am also hoping to get the birthday present for Jozef finished off today. It is a lot to try to accomplish before heading into the city for the art museum, but I hope to get most of it done. Now, to get things accomplished!