Summer Canning ~ My Preserving Season So Far

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It’s been a busy preserving season so far! Summer is of course the busiest for canning, and I thought I’d share a bit more detail of what I have been making.

Why Can and Preserve?

First I thought I’d address the question of why I am canning and preserving! 

Home food preservation has always been of interest to me, ever since DH and I got engaged and I started planning my future as a homemaker! 

I believe that home canning is a great way to save money and the perfect way to make the most of surplus home grown produce. Although I don’t have a proper veggie garden yet (I’ve been saying “maybe next year” for the past two years!!!!), I have a few friends who have a large garden, and they have been sharing their harvest with me! 

We also have a local Fruit and Veggie shop that we can get fresh produce from at affordable prices… and since last December my kitchen has often looked like this:

What Type of Canning and Preserving Have I been doing?

​In the past I have done many different methods of canning and preserving. So far this year I have been:

• Jam  and Relish Making
• Bottling (water bath canning)  Fruit, and
• Freezing

Which Canning Supplies have I been using?

I think it is important to have the proper equipment for canning and preserving. Some of it will cost some money up front.. I tend to go for quality and reputable brands because I think it is a better investment to put money into special equipment and be sure your preserves are safe for consumption. 

However, I do reuse a lot, as you can see in the first section below:

Old Glass Jars – from Jam and Condiments

For the jams and relishes, I’ve mostly been using old jam and condiment jars. I keep all my jars throughout the year and have them clean and ready to use come canning season. Surprisingly, I have done so much this season that I have run out, so I have had to start using jars like the ones below.

The main thing to think about when using “old” jars is to make sure they are in good condition, that the lids are not rusty, etc. Really this applies to every jar you use, even the ones below.

Oh, I also have in the past, bought boxes of new jars, from our local grocery store, Kmart, and once I got a box from a wholesaler in Melbourne.

Fowlers Vacola Bottles

Fowlers is an Australian style of preserving. This is the style I started with 32 years ago, and I still like using it. At the time it was the most popular way to preserve. It is a water bath canning method, and I have always used the electric boiling water bath canner called the all “All Rounder” unit which is now called The Simple Natural.

I usually use Fowlers bottles for tomatoes and fruit, and while I have considered switching over to Ball (see below) I still like using Fowlers because we can get used bottles secondhand and from friends.  

Also, what I love about the electric Fowlers preserving unit is that the processing time for all of the bottles is the same. Keeps it nice and easy!

Ball Mason Jars

I only started purchasing Ball products back in 2014 when I discovered pressure canning!   I bought the pressure canner and started collecting jars! I really only prefer to use these for pressure canning, and the Fowlers ones for water bath canning. But having said that, I did run out of normal jars for jams and relishes and grabbed some of the smaller Ball jars for them.

Our First Two Big Canning Days

As I’ve mentioned, my friend Liz and I started canning just before Christmas. I love canning with someone else. It really helps with motivation, preparation and clean up!!

Our first sessions we had fruit everywhere in boxes…

and kilos of tomatoes…

It was good for both of us to be working – while Liz worked at the table cutting fruit, I was at the sink getting the tomatoes chopped and ready to cook.

By the end of that 2 day session we had all of these done:

You know I like printables and tracking things… well, I wasn’t quite prepared for starting the summer canning season, so I wasn’t ready with any fancy printables. Instead, I jotted it all down in a notebook:

As you can imagine, we were quite pleased with our efforts, and after we let all the jars sit for 24 hours, we removed the clips and rings where necessary and divided it all up… Liz took home half and the rest went in my cupboards.

Another day we got all of this done:

and another day this:

And then after that, I forgot to write down what we had made!!!!

I won’t bore you with more photos of the same, but here is a list of what I think what we have done so far:

Fruit and Tomatoes:

• Bottled Peaches
• Bottled Pears
• Bottled Nectarines
• Bottled Apricots
• Bottled Tomatoes
• Bottled Beetroot (Beets)
• Applesauce

Most of the above was done in Fowlers jars.

All of the bottled fruit is going to be great at any time of the year from now on – my favorite is to have it on top of ice cream, even in the winter!

Jams:

• Strawberry jam
• Strawberry and Rhubarb jam
• Strawberry and Plum jam
• Plum jam
• Boysenberry jam
• Black Currant jam
• Apricot jam
• Nectarine jam
• Raspberry jam

I think I have enough jam…. two weeks ago I also turned 5kg of strawberries into a variety of sizes of jars of jam, so even with sharing some of that, I will have enough for the year. I’ll also have enough to give away a jar of jam every now and then. Just adding a label, and a pretty fabric cover on top of the lid, makes a wonderful gift! In fact all of our bottled preserves would make great gifts!

And just recently I have made some relishes:

• cucumber relish
• tomato relish

Recipes and Helpful Equipment

I get my jam recipes from the internet, from old cook books and sometimes from the back of the packets of Jamsetta… Yes, I use lemon juice, but I never seem to get the jam set enough unless I add a bit of pectin. The traditional way of making jam used to be the same amount of sugar as fruit… I think most of us put less sugar in these days though.

I’ve also been using my Thermomix to make jam in! It has been amazing! No stirring, just add the ingredients and let the machine do the rest!! I use the inbuilt Cookidoo recipes, and tweak them just a little.

I also use the Thermie when I make my tomato preserves and my microwave!! I’ll do a whole post on that one day. I am a kitchen gadget girl and always try to use them to make things easier.

What Else do I want to Preserve This Season?

Tomatoes

The one thing I NEED more of is tomatoes. For some reason we haven’t had that many yet, and I guess it must be just how the season has gone. Despite our summer starting early, not many of my friends and family have enough tomatoes at the moment to bottle. I will have to see if I can get some boxes at our local fruit and veg shop, or farmers market.

I want to make some Tomato Sauce (ketchup), Pasta sauce, soup tomatoes, salsa, and diced tomatoes… yeah, I need to find some boxes to buy!!

Pie Filling

I would LOVE to make some pie filling… I have seen recipes in some of my canning books, and I reckon it would be so handy to have on hand for the winter. Apples for homemade apple pie, and maybe peaches and apricots.

This Ball Apple Pie Filling is the recipe I want to try, but we can’t get ClearJel here, so I would need to order some. Not sure if they would ship to Australia, but I will give it a try.

Other Odds and Ends

I found two great blog posts with oh, so many delicious-sounding easy recipes!!:

21 Canning Recipes You’ll Want to Can Every Summer

54 Canning Recipes in Seasonal Order

I’m particularly eyeing these ones off:

Corn Relish

Chow Chow Relish

Beet Chutney

Pickled Zucchini

Rhubarb Cinnamon Jam or Vanilla Rhubarb Jam (even though I said I had enough jam!!)

Apple Butter (I’ve never made this before! No idea what it tastes like, but seems like a fun thing to try in the slow cooker!)

Pear Butter (ditto)

Hmmm… I think my canning season is not yet over….!!!

What I have NOT Canned yet, and Probably Won’t this Season

One thing I haven’t done yet is canning summer vegetables. Ever, not just this season. I do have a pressure canner, as mentioned above, but I mostly use that in the colder months, so not for summer canning.

Although we have been getting lots of green beans from friends’ gardens, the reason I haven’t set up the pressure canner is because I have an electric stove inside and don’t want to use it on there. I need to get DH to help me get a gas stove set up outside, and then I can use the pressure canner outside. This will probably be something I’ll be doing in the middle of winter…. to can meat, broth and such.

Well, if you have made it this far in the post well done!! This blog is a partly a journal of my life, and I often find it handy to come back to posts to remember what I have done and find recipes that I have linked to. They might even be a little bit inspiring to some of you!

I’m just going to finish off with a quick picture I took of Liz’s preserves on her shelves yesterday:

Don’t they look great?! I will show you one of mine too when I get them all in my new pantry cupboard…

For those of you who live in the Southern Hemisphere and do canning, have you had a successful preserving season? For those of you who live elsewhere in the world and enjoy canning, what kind do you try to do each year?

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