Cucumbers have always been a top priority when deciding what to plant in my garden. Our family loves to eat them raw and I love to pickle them. A favorite recipe to can for years was Seven Day Sweet Pickles. This recipe can be found in old cookbooks from our grandmother’s time. The original recipe took quite a lot of sugar but you can have the same crunchy sweet pickle using Stevia.
Have you wanted to learn the art of canning? You can! Here is a step-by-step tutorial on canning diced tomatoes. This is an easy item to start with and you can just do a few pints at a time as you learn the process. The best thing of all –you will have a superior product compared to what you can purchase in the store because you control what you put into the jars. I love to can diced tomatoes in the summertime to add to Taco Soup and Beefy Cabbage Soup in the cold winter months.
Pickling cucumbers always find an honored place in my garden. These cucumbers are different than the cukes you buy in the stores. Pickling cucumbers are especially bred for pickling–just like their name says. They are short and blocky, medium yellow/green in color, and have black spines. They make the BEST pickles. I love to can all different kinds of pickles and my family loves them.
Canning and preserving foods has become a lost art to many people in our generation. I still enjoy gardening and processing most of our food. Our family loves tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches. If I don’t preserve enough of soup to last a year–they let me know very quickly.
