Canning 101!

Another very heathy, cheap way to make food is canning. This was my very first attempt at canning so I went over to my mother in law's who has been canning for years. It was a lot of fun actually and the food turned out edible so I was very happy. Here is how my first attempt went:
First we headed out to a local farm to pick some tomatoes. This is a great way for your kids to get involved as well.

Then we headed on over to MeMaw's house to cook up some yummy food!
Another great spot for the kids to help out is with cleaning the veggies (I think its the only thing I can get them to clean).

After cleaning the tomatoes, we cooked them in some hot water.

After cooking the tomatoes, peeling them, and slicing them we then added in all the other ingredients to make some yummy salsa (which my husband eats like crazy).

After getting it to a boil it was time to add in the spices.

We then cooked the salsa for awhile until it got to the right consistency we wanted.

The last thing to do was add the salsa to the canning jars and put them into boiling water to make the seal.

When we finished this is what we had!

I spent just a little over $20 and ended up with 11 1/2 jars of salsa and 6 pints of tomato juice! Just that amount of salsa alone is worth well over $20! I was very happy with my first canning experience and even enjoyed it. I'm very excited on canning many more fruits and veggies over the next few weeks! And the best part of canning is that once you have all the supplies and can grow a decent garden, you can store a lot of food for a very small amount (which has become our goal for next year). Hope you are able to give it a try and can enjoy as much as I have!

Saving money on fresh fruit and veggies!

Right now is the best time to be stocking up on all your fresh fruits and veggies while the price is right, but what do you do with them after you buy them since you obviously won't eat it all in one week. Well I spent about about $22 yesterday and came home with several grocery bags of fresh produce. After I got home I spent a couple of hours getting a lot of my veggies and fruit ready to freeze. Here is a website that will help you freeze most of your veggies: http://www.gardenguides.com/416-freezing-vegetables.html. It is so easy to do and it even tells you how long it will keep! I'm also going to start learning canning from my wonderful mother in law who has been doing it for years. With our garden in its prime, we are starting to take in more food than we can eat so I'm giving it to lots of family and friends but I really need to be getting it ready for the winter months. Why do I freeze and do canning? Right now food is cheap so why not stock up plus in the winter they buy the fresh fruit and veggies from across the world before it is ripe then use chemicals and gasses to ripen them......yuck! I want to keep everything as natural as I can for my family and this is the best way for us along with being very cost efficient! So I can't wait to adventure into canning and make lots more yummy food we can enjoy all winter long! Stay tuned for more!

Cleaning your fruits and veggies!

Since sometimes we can't financially afford organic or its not available so I did some researching on how to clean your fruits and veggies the best and cheapest way. Most of the sites I visited all said a vinegar/water mixture. Mix 1 part vinegar to 3 parts water. If you choose to soak it in this solution, do so very quickly because soaking the fruits and veggies too long will drown out all the nutrients.

An editer from Cooking Illustrated tried cleaning some fruit and veggies four different ways so this is what he found.......
-he washed the first batch with anti-bacterial soap (this idea was not highly recommended because no one likes the taste of soap, nor is it healthy to be eating it.
-The second batch he washed in the vinegar/water solution.
-the third batch he scrubbed with a brush.
-the fourth and final batch he just cleaned with running water.

He discovered the scrub brush got rid of 85% of the bacteria (a little more than water alone).
The water/vinegar solution actually got rid of 98% of the bacteria.....that is amazing!
He said he uses a spray bottle already ready with the solution and he just sprays down what he needs then rinses it off with running water.
He said the technique works best for smooth skinned fruits and vegetables. When you get to broccoli, lettuce leaves, or spinach, produce is harder to clean — as we've learned from recent nationwide recalls. He found that soaking lettuce in the vinegar solution works well, but it's a little more labor intensive than spraying apples.

Difference in olive oils?

Since we are now cooking our meals from scratch, I am finding myself using oils a lot more. So I had to learn what the difference was between the olive oils (regular, virgin, and extra virgin). After looking at many, many different sites, they all basically said the same thing. So I just copied the answers from one of the sites and here is the jist of what the difference is.......

What is ‘Olive Oil’
A. Olive oil is olive juice, plain and simple.

What is ‘Virgin?’
A. Virgin means mechanical extraction. The oil or juice is extracted by machines with no chemicals used in the process.

What is ‘Extra’?
A. Mechanically extracted (virgin) olive oil is not all the same quality. 'Extra' is the highest quality and is thus classified because it goes through a battery of tests, both laboratory (analytical) as well as 'taste' (a cutting by an olive oil master similar to the way wines are taste tested). Virgin olive oil that is judged to have ‘no defects’ is classified as extra. So ‘extra virgin’ means – mechanically extracted olive juice that passes laboratory and taste testing with no defects


So basically it is saying to spend a little extra and buy the extra virgin. I also read to make sure it is stored in a glass bottle because if it is stored in plastic container it can absorb PVCs. It also needs to be stored in a cool, dark place away from heat of the stove and sunlight.
Hopefully this helps you as much as it has helped me better understand olive oils.