Canning and Processing...Can I Do It?!?

When I was very little, my grandmother used to live with us, which was absolutely wonderful! Every summer, she and my mom would get us all together with buckets, and we'd head out to the field behind our backyard. Our goal? Berries!!! Lots and lots of berries! I don't actually remember what kind of berries we picked, but we always picked a ton of them! And then we'd head back to the house, overflowing buckets in tow, and my grandmother and mother would spend the rest of the day making jam and processing it all. To do this, they took out the biggest pot I've ever seen, added water, and boiled it over and over all day. Our kitchen was just filled with steam! My mom and grandmother made short work of those berries, and, if we were lucky, they'd also process homemade pickles from cucumbers straight from our garden! I used to love those days, but, unfortunately, I never learned the tricks of processing fruits and vegetables.

I've wanted to do it myself, but I've always been a bit tentative. What if I didn't process the jars correctly and I ended up inadvertently giving everyone food poisoning (can you tell I'm a worrier!?!). I asked my mom to show me how to process food, but she wanted nothing to do with it. I guess she had enough of it all those summers we were growing up! Eventually, I have gained some confidence in my ability to read directions out of a book (ha ha), and have made some different jams that were quite successful. So I finally decided that this is the year I'm going to try something a bit more complex! I'm going to do it this summer! I decided on making salsa, since we love the stuff and it's not too difficult to make. The tomatoes and peppers also looked fantastic today in the market, so that sort of helped me set my mind to it.

My future salsa!

As you can see from the picture, I didn't get tons and tons of vegetables...just enough to make a few pint jars of salsa to store away for the winter. I figure I'll start out small, gain confidence, and then maybe next year, really have at it! So cross your fingers that I know what I'm doing! I'll keep you posted on how it all comes out!