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!

Our Composter!

Not long after starting our garden, I saw some articles about how good compost is for you garden. So I began looking more into it. I was completely amazed with how many things you can recycle into a compost pile. I looked into different ways to make your own compost and I liked the containers because I was afraid my neighbors would have an issue with us if we had an open compost pile in our backyard. Well my wonderful in-laws told us they had a compost tumbler at their house that they don't use and we were welcome to borrow it! This was great news to me as the cheapest one I have found so far was around $75. So we immediately went to work on making our compost. I read that it can take anywhere from 6 months to a year to get some good compost to use so this will be perfect for our garden next year.
Of course I got the kids involved with our new recycling program and they love it! I told them all the things we can put into it and they love helping us out with recyling. So here is a picture of them with a few of the things we can put into the compost: Joey holding up some grass representing our yard clippings. Andrew holding up a bag with shredded paper and a shredded paper bag. Adriana holding a container I use to collect all our extra fruit and veggie clippings I have after cooking.

And here is a picture of our compost tumbler. I know not too exciting but I am really excited to see what great compost I can make out of it!

I will keep you updated on how it is coming along!
(Oh and if you are wondering what the red spots are on my kids faces, Adriana got a stamp at school that day from the carnival and they thought it was great fun to stamp their faces.....ugh!)

Garden update!

Our garden is finally starting to take off. I'm hoping we will have some fresh veggies soon!
Chris got the fence put up around the garden to keep the dogs out and I have been trying the hot sauce mix to keep all the animals away without needing to use any harmful chemicals. We shall see how it goes.
Here is an updated picture of the garden.

A few pictures of some of the veggies starting to pop up!

Homemade pesticides!

Since are garden is now starting to grow I figured now would be a good time to start learning about homemade pesticides. Obviously with trying to keep my kids safe from all the chemicals in the world, I would much rather find a safe way with normal household products. So this is what I have found so far. This is a mixture from all kinds of websites. I will let you know what has worked best from our garden.

Mix homemade garden sprays using water and plants (or dried powders) from the garden such as hot peppers, onions and garlic. Add a drop of dish detergent to help the solution stick and store in a spray bottle to apply to infested vegetables or flowers.

Place a yellow pan with soapy water out in the garden to attract aphids and beetles. They are attracted to their favorite color and the soapy water suffocates them.

Make a trap for slugs by placing an almost empty can of beer on its side in the garden. Slugs and snails will go into the can to drink the fermented liquid and not come out.

To say good-bye to garden insects and slugs try mixing aluminum foil strips with your garden mulch. Aluminum foil not only deters garden pests but due to its reflective property it also gives your plants a solar boost.

Onion concoction is an effective home remedy to get rid off garden pests especially from your vegetables and flowers. With the help of a blender make a smooth paste of 4onions, 2 tbsp of cayenne pepper, 2 garlic cloves and 1 quart of water. Before using this homemade pesticide dilute this puree with 2 tbsp of soap flakes and 2 gallons of water. Now spray this diluted homemade pesticide on your pest infected plants.

To protect your plants, vegetables and flowers from pests simply mix flour and black pepper powder. Now sprinkle this mixture around the plants.

You can prepare an insecticidal soap at home by dissolving 1 tsp of any liquid dish soap in 1 liter of water. This solution is effective in getting rid off whiteflies, thrips, spider mites and aphids.

General pest repellent
This is quite a recipe...but its worked for me as a general spray that has helped prevent a lot of infestations before they became a problem.
- 1/4 cup of hot red peppers (red pepper sauce works well as a substitute)
- 1/4 cup of fresh spearmint (look in your produce for fresh herbs or grow your own !)
- 1/4 cup horseradish, both root and leaves (prepared horseradish doesnt work as well)
- 1/4 cup green onion tops
- 1 tablespoon of liquid detergent

So here is a good list of things to try. I have not had a chance to try any of these yet, but can't wait to. I will let you know what has worked for us and if you get a chance to try any of these, please let me know what has worked for you. If you have any other recipes I would love to hear them. Happy gardening!

Freezing vegetables!

For those of you who have asked me how to freeze vegetables, I just use this simple website of how to freeze most veggies. It list most of the vegetables I use and is really simple.

http://www.gardenguides.com/416-freezing-vegetables.html

Hope it helps you all out!

Happy Earth Day!

I really try to teach my kids to respect the Earth and to celebrate Earth day everyday. I expain how recycling and cutting out the chemicals in our lives really helps out. This year we also planted a huge garden, compared to our small one we used to plant on the side of our house. We planted carrots, tomatoes, corn, onions, peppers, cucumbers, squash, green beans, lettuce, and maybe a few more things I'm leaving out. The kids helped us out with making the garden and had so much fun. They are very excited to be able to pick all the fresh veggies out of it as soon as we can.
So here is a picture of the garden. We still have to put the wiring around it to protect it from the animals as well as our dogs and kiddos.

A closer picture.

I can't wait until it all starts growing!!!