Garden Fresh

We have been doing a lot of canning the last couple days. I made some crab apple jelly, and pickles. And tonight we juiced about 50 pounds of apples to make some hard cider. We are for the most part still new to doing all this, but we do enjoy the results.

Thanks to a childhood friend, I have successfully made my first batch of pickles. The recipe for the brine was so simple:

4 quarts water
1 quart vinegar
1 cup sugar
1 cup pickling salt

Boil all together. Sterilize jars and lids, I put in some garlic and dill weed to add some seasoning. There is no need to process the jars. So it really is one of the easier ones I have seen.

I also made some apple jelly the recipe for that was:

8 cups fresh crab apples
water as needed
3 cups white sugar

For this one I actually doubled everything, as we a ton to use. This is I actually made last year, and loved the results, so I decided to make more. Our garden has been great this year as well. We made some garden boxes at the beginning of the summer and planted our favorites! Some carrots, cucumbers, corn, peas, edipomme (soy beans), beans, tons of tomatoes, peppers, strawberries, and a little herb garden of basil and rosemary.