Sadly yes, I'm limited to water bath at this time. The plan was to buy a pressure canner and a dehydrator this summer but when my husband got laid off, those plans were canceled. In the past I've not had good luck making spaghetti sauce my kids would actually eat. The Chunky Basil one had such good reviews, I wanted to give it a shot. Since my freezers are full, I figured if I was going to practice, I wanted it to be a recipe I could can if it turned out well. I have a good sized garden (and since my parents own a greenhouse, they gave me the plants for free) as well as access to a local amish produce auction where stuff sells dirt cheap (a bushel of green bell peppers for chopping for $1.00, canning tomatoes for $4-6 a bushel, Onions for 20-25 cents a pound etc and my parents buy stuff there regularly and give me their extras in exchange for some of the stuff I can). I also have a good supply of lids I bought last year when stuff was clearanced out. Overall I'm not too worried if the Chunky Basil Sauce recipe doesn't taste as good as I hope. I can always use the extras up simply by dumping a jar in every time a make a batch of chili (my pot is 4 gallons so a quart can easily get lost in there), I just know I won't have $ to get regular wine anytime soon. And since I have virtually free supplies at hand to make it, I'm not out much besides my time if the cooking wine tastes funky. As long as I know the substitution is safe, I can use it up in one fashion or another. I just won't make more than 1 batch until we can test it out. Since we have spaghetti almost every Sunday since it's a supper quick meal to make after we get home for church, if I can find a suitable sauce, it will definitely help the wallet come this winter when I don't have access to so much produce. I got the salsa done today and if the kids behave well tomorrow I will be making the spaghetti sauce. I'll let you know how it turns out. Thanks again.

nevermind! posted this on the "other side" haha! The answer was 6 lbs.

olychick, that's kind of confusing, I know. It's actually a recipe I got from Carol/Readinglady, and it's definitely worth the trouble. Measure the fruit and add a cup to the cooking pot. Add a cup of sugar, stir to dissolve, then add more fruit, stir, add more sugar, stir, keep alternating until it's all in the pot. That way the sugar will dissolve and not clump up or stay grainy. Happy Canning! Annie

Kate, this is the first year I've done this pepper, so I did half sweet and half without sweetener. The unsweetened batch got garlic, black peppercorns, allspice berries and bay leaf. The sweet ones got pickling spice. I did run a darning needle through each one to be sure the pickling brine could enter the peppers. I learned that trick from Grandma when we canned spiced crabapples, she made me run a darning needle through from the stem to the blossom end so they wouldn't explode. That's odd about your leathery peppers. I canned a batch of "cowboy candy", which was basically a bread and butter pickle with peppers in place of cucumbers and they came out fine, not tough. No one really liked them, though, the people in the family who like the sweeter pickles don't like hot peppers and vice versa, so I haven't done that again. These are going to have to be darned good if they are a repeat because they are definitely tedious! Annie