Summer of Canning

I grew up in a family that canned everything... well almost everything.  My mom used to can venison... do you know what that is???  I also have a father who grows an enormous garden.  So, since I'm a school teacher and I have my summers off, I had some time to can.

 The first thing we had an abundance of was cucumbers.  I LOVE cucumbers.  I probably ate 8 cucumbers a day.  Some just with salt.  Some dipped in ranch and some with a delicious marinade.  But there were way more than I could eat.  So, I bottled some pickles.  I used an old family recipe.  I don't know if they turned out that great.  I used fresh dill the first time and later found out you are supposed to use dried dill.  The other batches have dried dill, but I haven't tried the pickles yet.  If anyone has a good recipes for pickles, I'd love one!!!

I also bottled a batch of our family's favorite relish.  It's not dill relish, it's not sweet relish.. I'm not sure how to describe it.  It's yellow and it's delicious.

I also bottled some dill relish.  I used this recipe on Tasty Kitchen.  I think it turned out pretty good.  I love these adorable free printable labels for the jar.  They are much cuter than just writing on the lid with a permanent marker (which is what  I normally do)

Chili sauce is another family favorite.  We have a family recipe that a lot of our family members love.  It's sweet and it's so yummy on eggs.  I bottled two batches of chili sauce.

Then, I thought I'd try my hand at pickling some banana peppers. We had a lot of them and thought I'd give it a try.   I used this recipe on the National Center for Home Food Preservation.  I haven't tasted them yet... I figured they needed to cure.

The last thing that I canned was salsa.  I hadn't wanted to can salsa because I thought it would be too hard.  But when I realized I could chop everything in the food processor... I figured I'd give it a try.  I found this recipe on Get Off Your Butt and Bake.  It is delicious!!!  I made mine really mild... cuz that's how I love it.

School has started and I'm not sure if I'm up for canning anything else.... but I'm looking forward to canning more salsa next year because we've already eaten 1 1/2 jars!!!