What She Shovels

The past two years at our house, we’ve had an overabundant supply of peaches for about two weeks. It’s all we can do to eat them and give them away before the ants haul them away to fortify their armies. Last year we discussed canning, but neither one of us knew what we were doing and we missed the window. This year, we not only had an abundance of peaches, but jalapenos, habaneros, tomatoes, herbs, and other vegetable garden-y goodness. With hundreds and hundreds of jalapenos on the bushes and only so many chips with which to scoop salsa, we decided to try our hand at canning. I read up on the process and determined jalapenos to be a good start and we gathered the equipment.
I found a simple recipe that called for jalapenos, vinegar, garlic and some spices and we set about on our First Canning Experience (does Fisher Price make a My First Canning toy?) Everything I read warned the preparer to don gloves before setting out to slice cups of jalapenos. Some people could not be convinced of this and spent the next 2 days with ice on their hands.

So we heated the water, sliced the jalapenos, heated more water, heated vinegar, mixed it all together and VOILA! We have canned jalapenos! Since then, we have canned tomatoes, more jalapenos, peach jam and peach chutney. On the one hand, I feel like I oughta be sittin’ out on the front porch, sipping some lemonade with the cast from Little House on the Prairie. On the other hand, it’s pretty cool to be in this century and know how to do this stuff. Who needs sodium benzoate when you’ve got a canner?