Summer Canning Inspiration ~ Preserving food ~ Canning Berries ~ Ideas for Preserving Cucumbers

Hi everyone, welcome to my channel and in case you're new here I'm mary and here on youtube. I like to share many of the things that I have going on around here with you all That includes, you know, decorating painting gardening cooking cleaning just a little bit of everything In today's video i'll be doing some canning This is the season of food preserving and I love it I love the feeling that I get if I can go downstairs in my little fruit room is what we call it And just grab something off of the shelf for a meal or just you know Part of a meal just such a good satisfying feeling I am blessed to have a husband who also enjoys, you know food preserving and gardening Especially when it comes to you know Growing your own food and john will help me in the kitchen You know if I have a big day of canning ahead of me And I kind of smile because I know where he gets that from I remember we used to live at his home place in a trailer the first couple years that we were married And sometimes his mom and myself would get together and do our canning, you know on the same day like together And his dad would always help so I definitely think that's where he got it from Such a good thing And here he is picking green beans that we had Planted or he had planted rather at the cottages And he's also planning on picking some wild blackberries that are growing along the fence line So what we'll be working on first here are you know canning the green beans? And then we also have a box of washington sweet cherries that we're going to can and these are so delicious, you know to eat them fresh, but They're going to come in handy this winter too to just you know, grab a jar and have that for our fruit Green beans are easy to preserve but they're a little bit time consuming You have to each individual bean has to be you know The top has to be cut off or that's how I do it I'm sure there's probably other ways to do this But I always just cut off the end where it was attached to the plant And I don't bother with the other end, you know Wash them and then break them into pieces put them in jars and then I add water And i'm also going to try this year to add a zinc tablet or a pill I've heard that people do that I think it keeps the color nice and green and kind of fresh looking and then i'm also adding some salt and some lemon juice As i'm working on the green beans. John is starting with the cherries, you know pulling the stems off And those will be washed and then you know put in jars with a syrup added So all the canning i'm doing in this video i'll be using my hot water bath method And i've done this before my videos. I I know people have different opinions on that As far as you know pressure canning versus hot water bath, but I grew up with the hot water bath It's what i'm used to it's still what I gravitate towards And I would just encourage you to kind of do your own research do what's comfortable for you And just make sure it's safe Whatever you do And I feel like you know common sense goes a long way when it comes to canning I'm going to go ahead and wash the blackberries and boil them to get my syrup or juice And then i'll probably wait until next week to actually make the jelly that I plan to make with them So i'll show you what all is going on here in the kitchen We have the green beans on the stove and these are supposed to cold pack or boil for around an hour And they're almost at boiling point you see there's some steam going on Check these Starting to see a few bubbles there not quite And here i'm using my little burner that I use in my soap kitchen because I don't have enough room on the stove I'm using this for the blackberries It looks like these might have started to boil almost And then over here are the cherries and these we really should have cold packed first Being that they only have to boil for 10 minutes. We should have done these first. They wouldn't have taken as long But it's okay. I think they're going to be okay just here on the counter until the green beans are finished And then i'll go ahead and make a syrup. Um, just a light sugary syrup for them I ended up cold packing my green beans for around an hour You want them to get you know soft but not mushy And then for the cherries, I only cold pack them for about 10 minutes And when I say cold pack, I mean, you know boil them in this hot water bath For my blackberry jelly, I am planning on using a low sugar fruit pectin And i'm pretty sure there's probably other options out there. I'm always kind of hesitant to use, you know fruit pectin In fact, I found a way to make strawberry jam without using any of that and just simply boiling it You know with sugar until it thickens, but I think with a pure juice like this I probably need more of a thickener, um, you know to To get it to the consistency that I want But I did find this low sugar one which john had gotten it for me the other day at german village again And I see where it I think you can use four cups of sugar versus seven cups of sugar so I thought that's a little bit better it still sounds like a lot but jellies and jams just are that mostly sugar and I always think well, I guess you don't use much at a time like you If you have a piece of bread, you know, it's mostly bread with a little bit of jam So it's not you know too bad. Hopefully so here I am a few days later I'm ready to make my blackberry jelly and i'm boiling my mixture here Um the syrup or the juice along with the fruit pectin sugar and a little bit of butter And i'll try to have all of these recipes down below in the description box They might not really be recipes or maybe just instructions rather On how i'm going about you know doing this, of course There's you know many other ways, but if you want to do it exactly like i'm doing it I'll have those instructions down below in the description box I'm also planning on preserving a few different kinds of cucumbers here in this video And I think I had shared one of these or a couple of them and maybe last year in a canning video But i'll do it again in case it wasn't the same kind. I can't remember anymore But i'm definitely doing the freezer pickles. It's what we call freezer pickles around here i'm, not sure is there another name for them, but we have some Cucumbers down in our garden and they did really well for us this year And when we came back from our vacation, there was a couple of them on the plant that were too big so I ended up just tossing those out but there was a handful of just the perfect size to Make some pickles with and i'm planning on doing the yeah the freezer pickles and then bread and butter pickles I still use my king cutter that we got as a wedding gift years ago For slicing, you know any vegetables and then also, you know for grating cheese. I love this thing Um, it's kind of hard with a wooden countertop to get it to stick like all the time that you're working with it So every now and then I have to dampen the bottom again So it sticks better, but this will definitely stick very well to your normal countertops So on another note you guys know I have a website and recently I it's really been weighing on my mind to try to have Some products on there That are hard to find anywhere else besides here kind of in our community I have some go-to products that I couldn't be without and i'm pretty sure you can't really you know Find them elsewhere besides if you're shopping here and you know homes county or other plain communities And this one is one of them the king cutter I don't think they make them anymore like this brand might not be out there anymore But there is one very similar and really heavy duty also that some of the stores around here carry and i'm looking into it to try to get them see if I can get them at Wholesale price and sell them on my website. So stay tuned towards the end of the video I'll be talking about that. I'll see you know what I can come up with at the point of editing here I'm still not quite sure, you know Can it even be done? But I do have a handful of products that i'll talk about at the end of the video that i'm pretty sure You guys would love if you you know are working in the kitchen or canning or doing some of those, you know home related things I have a butterhorn recipe that I want to share with you guys in here I know it's not canning related, but I know it's going to go really well with a blackberry jelly And this is a recipe i've used a number of times before And i'll share it down below in the description box in case you want to try it I wanted to talk just a bit about a canning kitchen if you're from around here Or if you know the ways of the plain community, you know We do a lot of canning and food preserving And most of the households will have kind of like a separate kitchen usually in the basement where they do their canning and some even might have it in the garage or Just you know elsewhere besides in their main kitchen and for years I had that downstairs In fact, I had it all of our years since we've been married except for the past couple of years and i'll explain why I don't I skipped a couple years, but I'm really missing it now that I don't have it Like I really don't like to can up here in my kitchen. First of all, it's really hard on a kitchen to have all of your Canning done up here and then with the hot water bath You have all this steam in your kitchen and it's just a big mess and often It's just nice to have a separate kitchen for it And the reason I kind of stopped doing that was when I started my business here with the etsy shop and the youtube channel That was one thing I cut out of my life And I knew if I were to actually do that, I just get rid of my canning kitchen That way I would have no excuses I just stopped canning for the time being and I ended up just you know buying a lot of the food I tried to buy locally still get good, you know market fresh food But during the winter time, of course, you know, that's hard But and then of course as the years went by here, I just kind of gravitated toward doing some canning again I think it's because I grew up with it. It's just I missed it Like I wanted that satisfaction of just going down the basement And getting my own food that I had preserved and I knew what was in there And and so now i'm kind of yearning for a canning kitchen again And we're talking about you know, having one downstairs where my soap kitchen is kind of combining the two Really? The only thing we'd have to do is just add a stove that I could have my canners on, you know to cold pack and such But it would be really nice again to have it in a different space and not in the middle of whatever you're doing in your normal kitchen So as you can see down here in my fruit room, I have a lot of empty jars. Those should be filled Hopefully I can do that this fall And I only have one more jar of peaches so that will have to be replenished again Such a good feeling to get this food on the shelves We ended up getting so many blackberries over there at the cottages. I decided to make some more jelly with them And serve them to our guests I normally bake some bread for them and add a little jar of honey But I thought it would be so fitting to have some blackberry jelly That was you know hand-picked the berries are hand-picked at the cottages ended up getting 84 little jars like this I couldn't believe it I love the idea that our guests will be able to enjoy these too And if any of you guys are ever there at the cottages and it's blackberry season Feel free to pick your own blackberries whenever you want and they're always so good fresh So earlier I had talked about possibly having some products that I want to sell on the website Things that I just love and couldn't be without And I do have one here so far to show you I'm, just not quite ready for some of those other items I do have some in mind and i'd always be open to ideas if you guys ever See me use something and you're like I wonder where she got that from or if you have a product in mind that this area Is known for and you wish you could get access to Let me know down below in the comments and i'll see what I can do So for now what I have is something I use every day In fact numerous times a day and like I mentioned before, you know, I don't have a dishwasher So, of course i'm going to be using dishcloths a lot But I imagine even if you would have a dishwasher You still need a dishcloth right to wipe your surfaces with and I don't use anything else But these uh, these are my favorite and I did get some access to some and they have four different colors right now And the lady I had spoken to said they sometimes switch their colors I know i've gotten maybe orange and yellow sometimes in the fall time They have more, you know kind of fall colors and I love this green right now I'm kind of in the usually the spring and summer I try to have green but they don't always have those So it's just kind of hit or miss whatever they have at the store I get them from but i'm thinking i'll probably sell them in sets of four And at this point, these are the four colors they have but they would possibly be switched, you know later on But make sure to check those out on my website and not on the etsy shop. It would be on my website only So I hope you guys enjoyed following along as I did some canning Hopefully I inspired you to maybe do the same again such a good feeling to have that food in storage and ready for us to use, you know come winter time when Stuff isn't as plenty as far as you know, fresh market produce and stuff as always. I hope your day is going great Thanks for watching and i'll see you in the next one. Bye