This is what keeps me busy

 I always have really big plans of getting a lot of sewing done in the summer but usually I get side tracked by other things.  One of those things is a garden.  I grew up with parents that had a huge garden and I do mean huge.  I always swore that I would never ever have a garden when I "grew up".  Well I was wrong!  A garden is a lot of work,  but it also saves lots of money at the grocery store.  Yesterday DH and I picked green beans, and cucumbers.  It looks like we are going to have a huge crop of both.  After working on the green beans last night, I was too tired to can them, so that was my project for today.

This is the canner that I use.  It belonged to my DH's mom at one time.  It has definitely been put to use over the years.  I canned three canners of green beans, that is 18 quarts of greens of beans, we will really enjoy them this fall and winter.  I know that is just the first of many times it will be used this summer.

My second project this week was a new one for me, Strawberry jalapeno preserves.  I have to be honest I didn't know how this one would turn out but it is really good.  I found the recipe in Mother Earth news, I did add more strawberries than the recipe called for and I still think that I could have added a few more, it is more "pepperie" than strawberryish.  

Here are the berries and peppers cooking.

The finished product

Hopefully no more gardening this week and I can do some sewing.  

End of the Garden

 Our garden has finally come to an end.  We have been really lucky to get as much out of it as we did considering how hot and dry it has been this summer.  The bell peppers were the last to go, so I decided to try something new.  I have a new recipe book on preserving and canning and I found a recipe for roasted and canned bell peppers.  I thought might as well give it a try.  Here is the first batch of peppers roasting away.

Here they are roasted and cooling.

Cooled, seeded and sliced.

The first two cans of peppers!!  This was really easy to do, time consuming.  You had to wait for the peppers to cool before you could remove the skins, which took a while.  After removing the skin, seeds and slicing them, you add olive oil, salt, pepper and Italian seasoning.  Very easy.  Would definitely do this again.