Peaches Galore!

One of my neighbors invited us over to pick some peaches and pears from her trees in her backyard. I took a couple bags to fill and left with, literally, boxes full of them. AS we left the tree didn't even have a dent in it. There were still a ton on them both. I waited a day for them to ripen a little more then I started bottling them up. I ended up bottling 18 full bottles and froze 10 medium size Zip Lock baggies.

It was fun and easy and I am excited I am finally getting into canning and food storage better. I can't wait till winter comes!

Canning Tomaotes

Our relief society had a canning tomatoes class the other night at Nicole's house. She has grown a ton of tomatoes and was so kind to host the event in her backyard and let everyone have some of her tomatoes. THANKS NICOLE!!!

Per jar you add 1 tsp canning salt, 1 tsp sugar and 1 T white vinegar. You boil the tomatoes until the skins start to peel of themselves and then take them out of the boiling water. Using a paring knife peel the rest of the tomato skins completely off and cut into pieces and put in jar. Make sure the rim is wiped clean before you seal it.

We then placed the glass jars into a boiling water bath. You can also steam them. That's it. Super easy!

Freezer Corn

Last week our Relief Society had a fun meeting about corn and zucchini. Most everyone around this area has their own garden, a huge one too. They is usually so much veggies growing fresh from the garden sometimes people aren't sure what do to with it all. It was a very informative meeting. Nicole, who has a beautiful garden, showed us how to freeze corn after you've picked it off the stalk. (Of course you can buy corn from the market or from a seller off the side of the road.) I picked 24 cobs of fresh grown corn from Nicole's fabulous garden.I hired some strong men to help husk and wash the corn...I had a huge pot of water boiling and added about 10 cobs of corn for 2 minutes. You want to blanch the corn. After I put the corn directly in bowls and pans of ice cold water.

After the corn was cold, I took off the kernels using this handy-dandy tool from Pampered Chef. It's like $8-$10 bucks and totally worth it!

I placed the corn kernels on a cookie sheet with plastc wrap on it and freeze for 12 to 24 hours. After that you place chunks of the corn in small zip-lock baggies. You can add salt, pepper and butter if you want. But corn right of the cob is so sweet and delicious, I didn't need to add anything to it. Doing 24 cobs it filled only 4 quart size bags. I placed those right back into the freezer. Easy, fresh and yummy!

Apricots any one?

This tree is located at my neighbor's house. It's huge with a million apricots on it. They said we could come by anytime and take as much as we wanted to. How nice is that?! I first took a bag full and the boys ate them all, yes they were that good! Needless to say we went back the next day and picked a ton!!

They're so bright and big, juicy too!

We all took turns climbing the ladder to fill our cute baskets up with them.

Here is Will with our neighbor Ben, the owner of the awesome garden and apricot tree. That huge bucket is full of apricots that have been through the blender. He's adding honey and some other ingredients to make fruit leather!

Here is Ben's wife Nicole smoothing some out on screen to place in her homemade dehydrate. When they're done they just roll them up inside the seran wrap.
Back at my house we had to use almost every bowl I own to store the apricots. I decided to make 2 batches of freezer jam and some fruit leather.

Just looking at it makes my mouth water. It is so yummy. I'm not (I should say, I didn't think I was...) a huge apricot fan but my mind has been changed. My cousins Aleigh and Angie came over and helped make a batch of jam and leather with me. We then went back to Nicole's house where she taught us how to can apricot jam.

Here's is a batch of my leather. Heat it for about 8-9 hours at 200-225 with the oven door slightly open. My first batch was made and eaten that day!

After helping Nicole jar some of the yummy jam. It tastes totally different than the freezer jam does. This one is chunky and not as sweet. Both are delicious!

Food Storage

Food storage for me is super easy in ways and hard in other ways....I have the $ and time to buy food items, I just have so little space to store the items. We started putting all the extra food under the boys bunk beds. There is a lot of space down there and it can hold a lot of food and drink for us. Great! But, the cans roll around, the bags open and I can't find anything so I don't usually use any of it. Over the weekend I went through and cleaned out and organized everything! YEAH! This is what I used...
I place all the fruit together, canned veggies together, cake/brownie mixes, condensed soups....You get my point! LOVE IT!!

Updates

There are so many things I need to update you all on.....So here it goes.

Garden update: Lettuce, peas and corn came up and the birds ate it all away....:( Strawberry plants are now dead. Onions doing ok out there. My 2 tomato plants are great! Lots of buds. I have a ton of cantaloupe, watermelon and pumpkin. Today when Scott comes home I'm putting up the 30% shade cloth to help put my little plants.

Gavin update: He had his last day of preschool and did really well there. Next week Gavin, Brigham and myself are off to Santa Barbara for a week of fun with Nana! He talks about seeing his Nana and Papa several times a day and is so excited to go visit them.

Scott update: He just completed another rotation! YEAH! That means he has only TWO more to go. The rotation he just started on Monday is a family doctor's office 5 minutes away from our house! He really enjoys it there and love that it doesn't take him forever to get home!

Baby boy #6: He doesn't seem to be as active as the other boys, but is defiantly getting bigger! We like the names Preston and Camden. Middle names we like are Joseph or Grant (family names). Any thoughts??

Food Storage: Going pretty dang well. I don't have anything from the cannery or those massively large containers of food, but I have been buying and saving extra in all the different food groups. Our shelves are stocked up! Scott keeps telling me not to go the store anymore, we're literally running out of room!