Living off the Land

I try to be friendly to the environment. We recycle, I've tried to eliminate our use of paper products, my kids are pretty good about turning things off - we even have those power strips that cut the power to items once they are turned off. Last summer I wanted to try gardening so my husband built a raised bed for me (under our grass is nothing but rocks). It did so well that this year I asked for two more. We've also added rain barrels and a rotating compost bin. Although I'm not getting as many zucchini as I did last year, I'm still completely hooked on gardening. I enjoy taking care of it and knowing exactly where our food came from.

I read an article a few months ago and it talked about cutting out any packaged foods with more then 5 ingredients. We certainly aren't there yet (especially with the challenge of being gluten free) but I'm trying to make more things from scratch. My Mom makes her own applesauce and strawberry jam but we've always frozen it. This year, we decided to try canning and we started with peaches. My kids LOVE fruit! I buy at least two of those Dole fruit cup packs each time I go to the grocery store and if I'm at BJs, I will pick up a case of them. Even with coupons, this adds up. We have a great pick your own orchard about 15 minutes away and a basket of about 40 peaches only costs around $13. A dozen jars were $9 at Walmart. Besides the peaches you only need sugar, water, and lemon juice. If you're new to canning see if there is someone you can borrow the canning pot and supplies from, try it first to see if it's something you'll continue with.

Peeling the peaches is time consuming, I read something about boiling them and then dropping them into ice water to get the peels off (just like you would a tomato) but this made the peaches really soft and they were getting squooshed when we tried to get the pits out so we went back to just peeling them. With peaches you can do a "raw pack" - just slice them up and put them in the jars. We poured a light sugar syrup (10 cups of water to 5 cups of sugar) over them, used a plastic knife to get rid of any air bubbles and then put a teaspoon of lemon juice over the top - someone told my Mom this would prevent mold. That's it! Put the lids on and put them in the canner for 25 minutes. Maybe 2 hours of work for what will hopefully last me a year (a dozen pint jars with 2 peaches each in them). I think the cost savings is definitely worth it.

The girl child especially loves applesauce so that's the next thing I'm going to try to can. Again, my Mom makes it and  puts it in the freezer but I'm impatient and I don't want to deal with thawing it. Apples should be ready to pick in the next few weeks. I'll let you know how it goes.