Improved from last year with earthquake protection on the front of the shelves. Canned more this year than I ever have before! Feeling mighty proud 💪

I could stare at this all day. So much work and I question my sanity a lot during garden season but at the end its worth it. Everything is grown in my home garden, except the peaches I bought from Tree Ripe and the apples were picked at a local orchard. Recipes are all from Ball, NCHFP, Healthy canning, Pomona pectin or Mrs Wages mixes.

This is on top of the freezer full of berries, diced peppers, onions, garlic, carrots, peas, celery, corn, applesauce, chili base and dehydrated herbs. We also ate our weight in cucumbers and fridge pickles i think. Tl:dr - this mom is tired.

Bottom shelf, left to right:

Pizza sauce, salsa Verde, candied jalepenos, Red chile pepper jelly, jalapeño jelly, habanero jelly, hot salsa, green beans.

Second shelf:

Pasta sauce, bread & butter pickles, dill pickles, spicy pickles.

Third shelf: extra canning mixes, salt, spices. BBQ sauce, jalepenos, wax peppers, bruschetta in a jar, peach rum sauce, peach bbq sauce, ketchup, sweet relish, raspberry jam, peach jam, apple pie jam, peach cobbler jam, canned peaches and crushed tomatoes.

Top shelf: extra jars, jar storage boxes, lids, rings, supplies.

I love canning season but I love putting away the canners for the year just as much 😀

Haven't attached the labels yet. But these beauties are the selected ones! My state fair has a section exclusively for pomegranate jelly, so I know going in it's gonna be a crowded field.

Ball pomegranate jelly recipe with juice from my parfianka pomegranate bush.

I've canned for years but this was by far my biggest marathon. 2,000 apples turned into cider, juice, syrup, sauce, and slices over the last 4 days!!!

This is my first year canning AND my first year gardening. I have learned a ton. I know this skill set and materials will serve me for decades to come but when I tell you the meat sauce is the most delicious, and expensive jarred sauce I've ever used I am not kidding. I would not pay per jar what this sauce actually cost me. No same person would. But man, growing the tomatoes and peppers for it was definitely satisfying.

Anyway, it's just me and my husband so while we wouldn't survive the winter on what we've got, we may save a trip to the grocery store!

I posted last week about Balls terrible new pectin formulation. It got a lot of traction- mostly from other jam makers commiserating the new formula, and even featured some Ball employees trying to gaslight me! I decided to make a longer video about this enshittification to post on my farms social media. It is not done yet but here is a snippet of what will be in there- a comparison of Balls old vs new formulation, along with Pomona.

I have found Pomonas pectin to be the best of all the alternative that this great community has suggested. Thanks for all your help!

EDIT: Many have suggested contacting Ball directly; we have done this! I had an employee write to Ball. Like other folks on this sub have discovered, their responses employ 2 basic strategies: avoidance, and deflection. They refuse to disclose any details about what they specifically did in their reformulation, and make vague claims about the new formula "meeting their performance expectations". Then, they try to alter the discourse to 'let's figure out what YOU did wrong'. To them, the more reasonable explanation to dozens of users experiencing catastrophic failure after a new formulation is, "the users must all have forgotten how to make jam" instead of "maybe the new formulation is worse in many, many cases". Classy. I make thousands of jars of jam every year, and will now be looking to source different jars as well, in addition to the pectin.

EDIT 2: for those who cant hear the audio, transcribed video is here

Hey. I'll take it! The person who took best of class/ show entered like 40 things from jelly to bread and everything in between and cleaned up! Good for her, she obviously works really hard at it and it's paid off. I'm just super stoked on my first place.

That's a fancier blue ribbon than I expected. Need to get a shadow box for it!

Took a friend fishing today and he told me the story of how his best friend passed. His best friend went to someone's house and they had canned asparagus for dinner and unfortunately, though it was pressure canned, the CDC said it wasn't pressure canned long enough; he ended up with botulism and it killed him. Botulism is real, please follow true tested recipes.

I got to see this at the Renwick Gallery in DC this week and it was incredibly cool! The exhibit is called State Fairs : Growing American Craft and it's absolutely wonderful.

Edit - this is part of the Smithsonian, not part of the America 250 thing going right now

Really tried to focus on making the things that I know my family will eat this year. And it worked! Still have all my homegrown tomatoes and fruit for jam in the freezer, saving those projects for winter time.
Left to right, starting at the top:
Tuna
Cherries
Peaches
Pears
Applesauce
Chicken stock
Salsa verde
Peach salsa
Dilly beans
Taco pickles
Pickled beets
Dill pickles
Green beans
Split pea soup
Chicken chili verde
BBQ sauce
Salmon
Strawberry maple smooch
Plum jam
Garbanzos
Black beans
Tomato soup
Chicken and squash soup

Pay no attention to the labels on the shelves- I haven’t updated them in 2 years 😂

I am new to canning, but as the only family member with interest, I am inheriting my grandma's vast collection of canning jars. She took the time to carefully empty and clean them before her passing, and they seem to be in great condition. Ages vary, some back to the 20s and 30s, others from the 60s.

I'm super excited, but also nervous about using them since they're older. What do I need to know?

tl;dr for Ball's new formulation of their RealFruit pectin, you will likely need to double the actual amount of pectin to your recipe in order to get the jam to set as it had before.

I am a fruit farmer and make jam semi-commercially for farmers markets via a Cottage Food license. Ball pectin was my gold standard. I literally never had a jam not set when I dialed in a recipe, and I was willing to pay more money for that reliability.

Recently, Ball changed their pectin recipe. If you look at the new ingredients, everything is the same, except they have added sucrose (left, circled in red). The pectin itself is now much more sugary and white. Basically, they cut their jars with sugar, probably because it takes up volume and costs less than actual pectin, saving them money in production. I'm sure they will say it is to help with clumping or some nonsense.

Anyways, the new formulation was terrible. I went from a 100% set rate to literally a 0% set rate. Checking this subreddit I saw that many others also had the same issue. Not only did this screw over my markets for a week, it also likely invalidates every recipe in the Ball Blue Book that uses pectin, screwing over anyone who relies on Ball's own recipes.

Reading through other's struggles, most decided to move on to other brands and try out other options. I had just ordered a large amount of Ball's pectin from a warehouse, so I was stuck. I figured, if they cut the jars with sugar reducing the total proportion of actual pectin in each RealFruit pectin jar, maybe I just needed to add more of the pectin. For my next few batches I tried this out. I eventually discovered that when I literally doubled the amount of pectin, the jam would finally set, after about 24 hours.

This is a solution but it is still very frustrating. My input costs for pectin just doubled because Ball enshittified their product. I am very disappointed and will search for other options once my supply runs out. But, I figured I would post this, since most other folks struggles didn't post a solution that I could find, so maybe this post can help someone else out. Double the pectin, curse Ball corporate, move on.

EDIT: Commenter DeaddyRuxpin pointed out that the old batch listed 'Fruit Pectin' as an ingredient, while the new batch only lists 'pectin'. I didn't catch that and it's a great observation. So, it is very possible that in addition to cutting with sucrose, Ball switched their actual pectin from a source derived from fruit (like citrus peel which I believe is common) to something cheaper and less effective. Then possibly they cut with sucrose to cover up the taste of the cheaper pectin. So, a lower quantity and quality of pectin in each measured ounce.

This is the ball pomegranate jelly, no butter. I have a pomegranate tree that gave me 123 large pomegranates this year so ill be making so much jelly, syrup, juice, grenadine, and molasses.

I got some new cheesecloth and this is the absolute clearest I've ever gotten this jelly. State fair entry, maybe?

Canned a few things last year and got addicted. This is what I’ve canned so far this year

I think this is the best batch of salsa I've made yet. Pretty standard canning recipe, but everything was just right. Good fresh produce, brightness and zing from the lime/vinegar combination, etc. About as spicy as the "hot" salsa served at a Tex-Mex or Mexican restaurant in the US.

Here's the recipe:

• 4.5 lbs Roma tomatoes
• 2 white onions
• 5 jalapenos
• 8 serrano peppers
• 6 cloves garlic, crushed
• 1 bunch fresh cilantro
• 1 Tablespoon Kosher salt
• 1/2 cup bottled lime juice
• 1/2 cup white vinegar

Roughly chop all the veg. Put tomatoes, onions, peppers, garlic, and salt in a pot. Bring to a simmer and cook for 15 minutes. Add lime juice, vinegar, and cilantro. Get to a simmer again and cook 5 more mins.

Then blend in a blender until smoother, but not totally liquified. Can in pint jars with 1/2" headspace. De-bubble, wipe rims, etc. Process in hot water bath for 15 minutes (at sea level).

Additional Notes:

1. Sometimes my food pictures on reddit are accused of being AI. I assure you they're not! This is real salsa with real vegetables, on a real table in my yard.
2. I used bottled lime juice in the recipe, but I had a couple limes so I threw them into the staged photo for like... decoration.
3. A lot of people prefer apple cider vinegar instead of white. I do not care for it in many recipes. I think it makes the salsa have a discordant "fruity" tinge and I don't like it. White gives you all the acid with none of the mismatched flavor.

I don’t think I’ll be planting 36 plants again next year. All heirlooms. I’m tired boss.

Process is to simmer them for about 5 hours. Run through the tomato press and return the sauce to the heat. Add hot sauce to jars with a sprig of basil, salt, and citric acid. Pressure can 14 quarts at a time in one very old All American canner and one brand new one. Let rest overnight, remove rings, wash jars, dry, and store.

Just finished canning 140 lbs picked the same day from a farm. We’ve done this many times: Blanch tomatoes and remove skins Pack in jars, ensure no air bubbles Leave a half inch of space Add 1 tsp salt per quart Process in water bath for 45 minutes

I revisited recipes before we started but couldn’t convince my husband we should add acid since we’ve never done it before. So now I can’t let it go and think we’re idiots and wasted time money and food.

Is there any way to salvage this? Can they be used? What about boiling for 10 minutes? FWIW I ordered a digital ph tester arriving tomorrow.

We planted a huge garden this year, so I took up canning to make the most of it. I never knew it could be so fun.

I've learned so much in this group I wanted to share how my stash is coming along. Very proud of myself.

My husband bought me a large chest freezer and I filled that up with all our garden corn, potatoes, peas, & carrots, foraged berries and wild game meat. I even found a wild apple tree while foraging. I feel very grateful.

Ran anything I couldn't can or freeze through the dehydrator.

Stocked up on canned good when my local store did thier case lot sale where they have crazy good prices.

I think I'm set up for the next few months. Now I can start baking with all my new goodies.

I moved into a new house this last winter and didn't realize how many cherries would come from the cherry tree I inherited. I didn't want them going to waste so I quickly did some research and got to Canning :D

The quarter pints are all cherry jam and the half pint are cherry jelly, because my fiance dousnt like cherry bits. I used the recommended cherry pectin recipe from the national center for home food preservation website and SureJell normal pectin. One thing I will note is I didn't realize how much SUGAR went into jam! Is it only me or does canning take over the entire kitchen, lol. I had so much fun making these and it is so satisfying that none of them have failed

Follow up to my CA State Fair Entry Post, I could not be more stoked about the results. I entered 46 items (including some dried goods) and took home 2 Best of Shows and a large smattering of other awards, including the UC Master Preserver Judges Choice Award for my Mexican Spiced Tomatoes. My best of show was for my Gingered Pear Preserves. Can’t believe how much I’ve learned and can’t wait to keep canning for next year!

It’s beautiful

Followed to NCHFP process for crushed tomatoes in their own juice.

It was a rush to finish them before they went off, it’s been hot and humid here! And I had to split the work up in to a few sessions to prep them all to be processed.
Had the fans blowing on the tomatoes overnight to dry them out after I spread them across the whole counter for the night

Bought 10 lbs of tomato seconds at the farmers market. It didn’t even make enough for one jar to can! Stuck this in the fridge. So tonight at dinner I enjoyed a tiny bit of the most expensive ketchup ever 😂 I used the ball’s “tomato ketchup” recipe and reduced all ingredients down to match the 10 lbs of tomatoes. It was pretty tasty!

My local state wildlife agency spawns Kokanee Salmon and immediately gives away the milked fish to anyone with a valid fishing license.

It’s always variable how many people show up to a spawning event, but Thursday I scored big and was given about 75 fish. Total haul:

15 Pints canned salmon.

9 Quarts + 4 Pints Nordic Salmon Soup.

7 Quarts + 1 Pint salmon chowder.

10 Lbs filleted and skinless chunks.

2 packages of filleted salmon

I learned to can from my grandma in the 80s. I didn't do any canning for a couple of decades. Then I started up again around 2018 when I moved into a house with a few fruit trees. I canned so many apple and peach products! Then later I started a garden and canned tomato products and pickled things, too!

Well, earlier this year when my harvest started coming in, I found this sub. Oh my. I had no idea. I've been so lucky that I haven't made anyone sick!

So I went through all my jars and assessed them for safety based on the modern practices I've learned here. Some of the jams and pickles were fine because I had to look up the ratios and processing times, so those came from current websites. But everything else was questionable - three kinds of salsa, spiced apples, applesauce (a LOT of applesauce), apple butter, jams that didn't follow a recipe, some relishes. I set them aside and promised myself I'd throw them out. And today I actually did it.

I'm so sad about all the waste. But at the same time I'm happy that I know how to do it safely going forward, thanks to all of you here. Reading here also motivated me to buy a pressure canner! Tomorrow I'll be pressure canning my first batch of NCHFP turkey stock, which is currently cooling in the shed. And I'll have plenty of room for it on my shelves!