Eat your heart out, Marthas! Canning

Just a portion of the delicious things we've been up to!

We were busy, busy the past few weeks working on canning produce from our garden. Our apple trees are still very young, so we were thankful to have access to apples from my dad's house. He has 2 MacIntosh and 1 Jonathan tree. Despite a late freeze, his neighborhood was a pocket where the apple trees did extremely well. I'm sorry to say most of them went to waste despite my efforts to talk with the homeowners and get apples to those who would use them. *tear*

Here's a list of what we accomplished:

Stewed tomatoes

Pickled peppers

Squash pickles

Green bean pickles 

Green tomato pickles

Ketchup

Tomato basil jam

Apple nutmeg conserve

Apple pie filling

Applesauce

Green tomato relish

Dehydrated cherry tomatoes

Dehydrated apple slices

My new favorites- squash pickles and tomato basil jam.

The easiest of all- dehydrated tomatoes and apple slices.
The hardest of all- apple pie filling. (Kept spilling their guts out the lids!)

It was a pricier year for us due to needing to purchase some of our own canning equipment. A food mill, purchased last minute, was more than it should have been at 70$. In the long run we'll be happy to have it. Still have yet to break out my pressure canner. I'm so intimidated! But have met some new local moms with a little more canning experience and plan on working with them to get used to it. I would love to can some meat. The dehydrator was borrowed from my mother in law but I have one on my Christmas list so I can do even more next season.

Some of these will be Christmas presents for friends and family this year!

What are your favorite home-canned goods?