DH eats PBJ's about once a week (because he likes them). He'll only use my grape jam. So, so long as the grapes are producing (they grow wild in the back yard), I'll make grape jam.

DH & I both love the tomato-basil sauce from Small Batch Preserving (It's also my Mom's favorite.) I don't even like commercial spaghetti sauce anymore. So I've been trying to figure out what tomatoes to grow for gardening season 2008.

Annie's salsa is also a must (I need to grow more tomatoes to have enough for sauce & salsa!) I give away a lot Christmas. I had to figure out who was "salsa worthy" this year!

My beans didn't do well this past year in the garden (pesky cut worms.) We ate them as they came out of the garden. So I'll hopefully be able to freeze some this year. I always try and freeze some broccoli, bell peppers and hot peppers too.

Oh, cranberries, cranberries, cranberries! I love cranberry relish. I did freeze some packages this year before they disappeared from the grocery shelves. I can only find them between Thanksgiving and Christmas here.

If you're wanting a French onion soup, why not grow plenty of shallots. These are in the onion family but offer a much more mellow flavor with a hint of garlic. Here, I can't enjoy beets, but do grow some for pickling, as a friend loves my beets when I bring her a big bunch of fresh ones. If you're canning meats, use a pressure canner. When I grow tomatoes, its usually 100+ plants per year. I like diffeent kinds of plum types and this past year a new favorite is the Oxheart, which is very meaty and has very little liquid and seeds. I grew pole beans of all kinds, but prefer to grow bush types now, especially the yellow waxed beans which seem to have a beter flavor after being frozen. Out of 10 bushes, picked about 5 big gallon bags.

I cant get enough beets! I canned them plain, pickled and froze them plain. I also discovered that if I just rinse the garden dirt off and freeze with skin on when I defrost them the skin slipped right off. My absolute favorite way to cook them is to roast them with butter,honey, brown sugar and a touch of cinnamon.

I also love green beans and brocc. I will be growing shallots for the first time this year.

Susan in NC

I grow a lot of tomatoes because I love to have a wide range of heirloom varieties, so it's actually happened that I've canned enough tomato products to get us through the year (depends mostly on how my time goes in the peak harvest season; last year I didn't quite make it --- ran out of crushed toms and salsa and dried cherry toms --- I think I probably managed it this year as I put up more of each but we'll see).

Last year I put up enough peaches that I had some right through the year, but this year I didn't put up any (peak season was right when I was organizing my wedding and the tomatoes won out for such time as I had) and boy am I missing them already.

Pesto. It seems no matter how much I make, I'm doling it out in a miserly way all winter and still running out before spring. And I ran out of the lovely end-of-garden roasted vegetable mix last year; this year I made more, and we'll see how it goes....

Oh, and hot sauce. I will be making more with bought peppers, but I didn't have nearly enough of my own this year.

Zabby

I use more canned tomatoes than anything. I also love the sweet cherries I canned. Annie's salsa is one of my favorites, too. Store bought green beans are gross to me, only homecanned will do.
The sugar free jams I made for myself have been a real treat.
Oh, and the beef chunks I canned are really so tender and handy to have.
I also freeze onions. They are handy, too.

Ditto linda lou - canned tomatoes. Sauce (seasoned and plain), paste, juices, stewed with onions and peppers, whole, chopped, salsas, etc.

Dilled green beans and pickled beets come in second. Wifes jams and jellies are third.

Dave

I find myself using store-bought canned tomatoes more than my own. This summer all tomatoes will be made into Annie's salsa and several batches of Shirley's vegetable juice cocktail, which I just love (especially as bloody Marys, so I'll be canning some dilly bean stirrers too).

I've made some delicious jams, but I just prefer butter instead of sweet spreads, so I never use up my jam. This year I will make just one batch of raspberry (from Mes Confitures) and one batch of Melly's chocolate-raspberry.

Still haven't made pickled cucumbers that I like, but I will pickle small batches of whatever else comes to mind. Probably try some sweet & spicy pickled garlic to mimic what my mom got me at a garlic festival, it's delicious.

Plenty of applesauce for my brother and some for me.

I don't cook meat, and it seems a waste of cooking gas to can dried beans since they can be done in the crockpot overnight at very low cost. So if I don't can much stuff, why is the entire clothes closet in my spare bedroom full of canned goods and canning supplies?! :-)

Great thread Lori!

Melissa

Items I wouldn't want to run out of. Tomatoes, veggie juice cocktail, pickles, stewed tomatoes, roasted tomato garlic soup, pasta sauce, corn, pepper jam, salsa, elderberries, applesauce, prunes, jams. I put these in order of importance.

Hmmm this is a tough one ...

We don't get decent fruit during winter and after the umpteenth apple we crave something different, so I love having the canned peaches, cherries, apricots, applesauce. We usually use these for breakfast, but I can't live without them.

Both of us work full time and often have other activities in the evenings, so pre-cooked meals are a huge asset. I have lots of different soups frozen away (tomato, onion, potato, etc.), frozen stews, frozen lasagna and eggplant parmesan, frozen chili - so easy to pull something out and heat it up.

We eat a lot of salsa, so can't live without several versions of Annie's salsa.

I use canned tomatoes a LOT in cooking.

For parties it's fun to have marinated peppers on a relish plate, especially several varieties.

The jams and jellies and preserves are the most fun for me to make and are wonderful gifts, so even though we don't eat a lot of them, I will continue to make them. Especially the unusual ones such as Habanero Gold and Zesty Red Onion jelly.

The ones that I could survive without making are the relishes and chutneys. They are good, but I don't use them all that often.

Sorry, mine got long too :)

Wow, I like all the stuff mentioned above!

What do I use most of? Tomatoes first, then green beans. I always run out of beets, both pickled and plain, mostly because I eat as many as I can when they are fresh out of the garden. Yum, I love them. We use a lot of jam, or Dad does, it gives me a chance to make more. My salsa goes quickly, I never have enough of that either, and Linda Lou's sweet pickles are nearly gone but that's my own fault, I just keep eating them. (grin)

Oh, and frozen blueberries. I always freeze about 40 pounds, but it's never enough. Never.

Annie

I love frozen blueberries and have taken to using them as ice cubes in my Crystal Light lemonade. Yummy when they are just slushy;)

I'm also planning on sweet relish. I can that in the tiny jars because we don't seem to use a big one up, I really only use it in things like tuna or potato salad.

I can't believe I didn't mention (Zabby's post reminded me) that I am planning to try some hot sauce as well, some with fermented peppers. I also use a lot of paprika so I'm thinking about trying to make my own from my own harvest.

I don't care for the veggie juice by itself as a drink but I use it in my veggie soups and stews so I may try my hand at that as well. Dang, I've got to get organized!! My biggest problem is going to be canning all this stuff in the heat. It was unbearable in my kitchen with just processing the salsa, I thought my air was going to die. It's too windy to attempt outside unless by luck it happens to refrain for an afternoon. Hubby bought me a pretty sturdy hot plate that I may try in the basement but I think I will have safety issues with the big pots. I'm still thinking, though. Lori

Dare I say my cured meats and sausages..

Ken,
I'd love to say cured meats and sausages are my most popular however, I'm not very good at making either.

Stick around the sausage making thread (or if they start a new forum subject). I can help with any problem or qustion you might have. Been doing these for over 30 years now. The meat curing is easy, as you just need a big bowl or container to hold the meat in the brine. An inexpensive meat pump, (looks like a big hypodermic syringe), and a couple of days in the fridge. My Canadian bacon is sooo good! I also turn store bought corned beef into pastrami, just by grinding spices and herbs and coat the outside and bake very low temp and very slowly. Even if you didn't have a ginder or a sausage suffer, you can make a decent pork sausage patty using a food processor, and the herbs and spices. Garlic is the main additive next to the meat and fat.

Canned black beans & chickpeas. Then tomatoes. Salsa (used w/ black beans for a quick soup). Then frozen wild blueberries & pesto. For some reason I horde my brandied cherries & peaches, or they would be more popular too.

We use the Italian sausage quite frequently.

I would have to say, the biggest problem is because of my successful ventures, there is a problem of trying to use things before they lose or diminish edibility.

My freezer is still quite full, although we rarely see the inside of a grocery store to shop for food on a regular basis - except for "other" needs. It's nice to have a great menu to chose from, but a bit difficult to use stuff on the bottom.

One item tho - some earlier orange marmalade - when I was diligently pursuing and learning about home made pectin. My family isn't too interested in marmalades - so hopefully, this summer 4 or 5 pints can find a use in BBQ sause - or something.

The biggest item - the candied orange peel - now that disappeared in short order.

Next summer - I promised to raise more pickle cukes - as I'm down to 1 quart of fermented dills.

Bejay

I grow pickling cukes on alternate years, as I have just too many in a single season that I can. Right now, I might skip another year of cuke growing only because I have so many left from two years ago, and as we know, they get quite mushy if left for too long. However, I may only plant a couple of cuke plants just for the half sours I always enjoy. Beause I had to buy a new freezer last summer, I was abale to give the new freezer some better order, and found a few things buried in there dated 2004 and a bit older. Oddly, after removing the supposed' power saver' device from my old freezer, it seems to behave itself a bit better. That power saving device was supposed to reduce power needs when the compressor motor was running, but it didn't really do much. As I also noticed my electric bill was back up to $200 per month again. I use the old freezer for things like wild birdfood seed cakes with suet, and a few other items like raw beef suet, and some other non essentials. The bulk of my stuff is in the new freezer, and I must say that it really dehydrates (while in auto defrost mode) things much more, compared to the old one. Frozen English muffins and bread are very dry when thawed.

suzyq,
Any chance you'd share your recipe for quick black-bean-and-salsa soup? I like black beans and would like to eat more of them but don't have a lot of experience cooking them.

bejay,
Clearly time to spend some of that $$ you save from not shopping much on an upright freezer! It's no exaggeration to say that ours (a housewarming gift from friends, so I really have no business telling you to spend $$ ;-) ) has changed my life.

Breakfast yesterday:
- zucchini bread made w/ garden squash & frozen in July +
- smoothies made from yogurt and from berries picked & frozen in July

Dinner last night:
-commercial cheese ravioli bought last month on sale +
-Chunky Basil Pasta Sauce canned from my tomatoes in Sept+
-turkey sausage cooked & frozen when on sale in August

Breakfast this morning:
-ginger-hazelnut spice bread baked and frozen last month +
-applesauce made & canned in October

Zabby

Zabby - The black bean soup is very easy. I use a qt of black beans....add salsa to taste (1/2 - 3/4 a pint)....and a little water for the consistency I like. Heat. That's it. Yummy with a dollop of sour cream (or yogurt) and warm crusty bread.

It's fun to try different salsa for flavor. I personally like the really chunky salsa. Maybe a little cilantro on top, in season.

My mom gave me the book "Artesian Bread in Five Minutes a Day" by Hertzberg & Francois, so that I could make the bread to go with the soup. It supposed to be one of the "hot" books locally. I'm anxious to give it a try.

Zabby, try these recipes:

Poblano chilies with black beans and cheese:
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/4240
I've made them as the recipe states, but I prefer mixing quinoa with the black beans for the filling (season with salt!), and skipping the caramelized onions. I made a batch for lunch this week and made this hominy, tomato, and chili soup to go with it:
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/107844

Black bean tart with chili crust:
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/11432
Beautiful vegetarian entree. You could probably come up with a lower-fat pastry for the crust if you wanted.

Serve all with Annie's salsa.

And I forgot to add that I will make more of Linda Lou's roasted red pepper spread. I've been rationing it out and I'd like to have enough to use freely!

I am going to plant a few things at my apartment this year, but I am also going to buy a CSA share to challenge my cooking skill since you don't know exactly what you'll get each week. My canning stuff will come from local farmers at a nearby market.

Melissa

Here is a link that might be useful: Black bean tart with chili crust

thanks, suzy and Melissa!

Z, off to toast a Montreal bagel for breakfast
(imported when I visited my brother last month and frozen; MAN, I love my upright freezer! Montreal bagels are something special, but they have a very short half-life unless frozen)

zabby -

I was following your pre-freezer adventures with interest. That was about a year-or-so ago. You could be right. This small freezer was a cast-off (maybe from someone else who bought an upright). It has served me well - for almost 10 years now. From time to time, I chop away the frost build-up along the opening, but it keeps right on "doing it's thing." But - perhaps it is time. It has outlived it's usefulness. For long term storage of meats, fish, etc., it was ideal, but for the in-an-out sort of life we are now experiencing - well, perhaps it is time to re-group.

This may not be too appropriate - as Bisquick isn't exactly a home-made type item, but yesterday, decided it's life was about to come to end, so made big batch of waffles, baked them and froze. This morning, I toasted some and had them with home-made boysenberry jam. Not too bad. I should use up that big box of Bisquick - soon.
I don't think the hens would eat it. Keeping things fresh - that's what it's all about - see what I mean?

Bejay

Bisquick can get mealy worms, as can many pastas and other flour grains. I used to like the Jiffy mix. Sometimes, if I have too much flour, it goes into the freezer, unless its one that I use more often, which then just refrigerated.

I definitely notice Bisquick not rising as much when it gets old. Here's my grandfather's cookie recipe which was a huge hit in our family. He died in June and now we make them to remember him.

Chocolate chip cookies
1/4 c. butter
3/4 c. brown sugar
1 egg
1 t. vanilla
1 1/3 c. Bisquick
6 oz. chips

Cream butter and sugar, beat in egg and vanilla, stir in Bisquick then chips. Bake at 375°F for 8-10 minutes (my mom prefers 350° but Grampa's were crunchier). I usually double it to use a full bag of chips. My grandfather used mini chocolate chips and made his cookies about an inch and a half in diameter, and we all do the same. The combination of Bisquick and brown sugar makes them tangy and rich tasting.

Melissa

Bisquick and Jiffy Mix both contain baking powder, and baking powder does loose its raising after a prolong storage. If you have a can of baking powder thats open, and has been sitting on your shelf for more than a year, consider it old, and replace it, as it has lost about half is power.

Canned goods we go through fastest: salsa, tomato/spaghetti sauce, and pickled asparagus. Everytime we open a jar of pickled asparagus it is gone really fast. We make a roasted salsa similar to Annie's, we also have to decide who at Christmas is worthy of it!

I always make more jam than we can use, but have a few yuppy friends who buy the surplus, so that works out pretty well, too.

We always have more frozen fruit than we ever seem to run out of, but we do go through it pretty fast with fruit smoothies almost every morning. Also we always use up all of our onions before we are into new onion season, so I guess I should harvest more of those. I grew a LOT of garlic this past year so I am hoping that takes me into the summer at least.

Marcia

Melissa - thanks for the nice cookie recipe. Today, I made another batch of Bisquick waffles to freeze, using up approximately half of the box. So - that leaves the other half for your cookie recipe. I made a print-out of it.

Marcia - Know what you mean about running out of onions and garlic. As I garden in small amounts, I just plan on having to supplement cooking onions, and garlic, also potatoes. That way, I can concentrate plantings in my precious soil space to those more expensive items - tomatoes, peppers, cabbages, lettuces, snow peas, and beans.

The hardest item to get enough of is pickling cukes - as I rarely see enough of these - fresh - in the market for A-1 freshness canning purposes. Planting enough of them, is my goal for the coming year.

Bejay

Unless that cuke supplier is a farmer who just picked them that day, pickles made from store bought cukes are not as crisp or hold up as well to pickling of any kind. I learned long ago that I can't make half sour pickles from any store bought ones. They just don't hold up as well.
Bejay, better start growing a few kinds of pickling cukes..

bejay, since you have limited growing space, I'll tell you a trick my father taught me about growing cukes. He took 3 or 4 tall garden poles (not the thin bamboo sticks, actual 1 1/2" wooden poles) and built a sort of teepee with them, and nailed a few thin slats crosswise...you don't need many, because you want a few open spaces without leaf cover. Then he planted his pole beans around the outside of the teepee, and his cuke plants on the inside. The beans would hang down inside the teepee, making them pretty easy to pick (and they tended to grow long and straight instead of curling up) and the cukes benefited from being shielded from the worst of the summer heat, so he was able to grow juicy cukes all summer and into the fall instead of having the summer heat wizzle them up. 2 veggie crops in the space of one!

I've only been canning for a few years, and started out with the easiest items, fruit jams and bread and butter pickles. They are still my most popular items amongst my friends and clients. Now I've gotten into marmalades, and that is a big hit with people who like marmalade. My husband and I like my pickle relish so much that I haven't bought a jar in a couple of years, and this past year I discovered the joys of pickled garlic. I still haven't come up with a batch of dill pickles that is as crispy as I like. I made a batch of full sours that turned out horribly salty, but after soaking in water for a couple of days, they're very tasty and crisp, but the ones I canned turned too soft. :( Next season I'm going to try half sours for my fridge and try a different recipe for the canned ones.

Also, this year I have decided to invest in a pressure canner, as I would love to can tomatoes (I use a LOT of canned tomatoes in the winter), my soups (I'm a soup freak!),and the local corn when it's in season...I'd also like to can some green beans for my stepmother who doesn't can anymore, but who misses the green beans she used to put up.

I am also resolving to can more peaches this year, as it's only January and I'm already sick to death of apples, pears, bananas and oranges...the only fruit in the market that's even worth bothering with. (As always, there are beautiful plums, mangoes, and nectarines, probably from South America, that are hideously expensive, and tasteless if you succumb to temptation) I didn't can any of the local peaches this past year, because it was so blasted hot when they came in that I couldn't face canning. But now I'm missing having them.

rachelellen,
You know you don't need a pressure canner to put up tomatoes but can use a BWB, right? Probably you do and have another reason for wanting to do it with a pressure canner, such as not wanting to have boiling water in your kitchen for so long at that time of year.... (Even up here in the True North, wouldn't want to do anything that takes longer than 35 or 40 minutes, which luckily I can manage since I can only in pints and half-pints for just me and DH, and don't do whole tomatoes but lots of sauce and crushed.)

Like you, I am missing peaches. Last year I canned a bunch and also put lots in the freezer --- just blanched, peeled, quartered. Missed the season (long though it was) entirely this year as I was planning a wedding & put such time as I had to the tomatoes.

Did manage to freeze some raspberries, which we're enjoying in smoothies to supplement those same fruits you mentioned. This time of year clementines are usually my saviour, though I haven't seen as many nice ones this year as usual. Sometimes some nice pineapples come in.

Zabby

You know Zabby, I had actually gotten it into my head somehow that one needed to pressure can tomatoes! I had never even looked at the tomato & tomato sauce recipes in my canning books because I didn't have a pressure canner! I wonder how I got that in my head? I suppose I just sort of lumped them in with other veggies. :S

Wonderful! Of course, right now a decent tomato can't be had for love or money, but you can bet I'll get busy next year. I will get a pressure canner anyway, because I do want to be able to do some soups etc.

And no, the thought of having water boiling in my kitchen for extended periods when the weather is between 90 and 105 outdoors isn't pleasant, but I've gotten kind of used to it. When I start gasping I jump in the pool (unheated) for a few minutes.

As for citrus fruits, I could have all the oranges, lemons and grapefruits I wanted, as everyone has trees full of them in their yards right now, but unfortunately, too much citrus and I get a rash, so mostly I use it for marmalades and curd.

I don't own a pressure canner here, and have canned many jars of tomatoes. I do use added citric acid in them however as thats what makes more them safe to can in a BWB. High acid foods are usually BWB canned.

Sure, rachelellen, rub it in --- locally grown fresh citrus AND a pool? Sheesh. ;-p

Seriously, I love my Great Lakes climate overall. I appreciate each season all the more for the contrast with the others. But occasionally, as today, when a wet, blowing snow is falling steadily, unattractive and somehow HOSTILE-looking, I briefly forget that fact....

As for tomatoes, they're apparently JUST on the safe side of acidity for BWB canning, so modern recipes call for adding a bit of acid (lemon juice, vinegar, or citric acid) to pad the margin of safety.

Some people who have both seem to prefer to do tomatoes in a pressure canner anyway, since it takes less time and water to process. Others say it takes almost as long once you let the pressure build up. And of course, you can use your pressure canner as a BWB if you choose.

I'm still a BWB-er myself; the only thing I'd really like to can that I can't BWB is some soups, and right now a row of jars of KatieC's onion soup would sure look good....

Zabby, off to fire up the woodstove

My oh my! If I could fill the pantry just by reading these postings... Lots of yummy things listed here. A "best of the best" it seems. Now to locate recipes and ingredients. :)