Adventures in canning!

Hello Blogosphere! Well at the end of my last post I promised to post about my Adventures in Canning. Last week was such a busy week! I spent almost every day at my Mom's helping my Mom and Grandma to put up veggies to get us through the next year. The main things we can and freeze are Grandpa's pepper relish, green beans, tomatoes and various forms of pickles. Last week we made Grandpa's relish.

 Doesn't it look so colorful and yummy?

 This is the finished product! Sadly, my Mom said I can't blog the recipe for the "Best Relish EVAH!!!" because it's a secret family recipe. Sorry to tantalize you with a glimpse of this wonderful stuff that is so good on beans, hot dogs, and of course Grandpa's famous relish ham. Since I couldn't give you the recipe I thought I would do a short tutorial on how to freeze green beans. We used to can them until mom got a ginormous chest freezer and we figured out how much easier it is to freeze them. 

First of all you have to wash the beans. They are very dirty and if you get them from a large farm rather than growing them yourself there is no telling what chemicals could be on them. Usually we move them from sink to sink until the water is clear. I suppose you could also soak them in a vinegar bath to kill any bacteria.

Next you will need to string and break them,

My Mom was kind enough to do a video on how to string and snap beans just in case you are a dummy city girl, like me.

After you get the beans cleaned, strung and broken you will want to blanch them. Don't worry, it's easy! Just bring them to a boil and let them boil until the color changes just slightly. Then, take them out of the boiling water and put them in cold water so they stop cooking. Let them dry on a towel and then you can bag them. We usually bag them in quart size freezer bags and stick them in the freezer. That's it, you're done! We bagged around 52 quarts of green beans and that should take us into next year when we plant our gardens again. 

Do you prefer canning or freezing? Tell me about it in the comments, also let me know if you would like a tutorial on canning tomatoes! Don't forget to follow my blog. I will be blogging about all kinds of housewifey stuff and my futile attempts to become the next Martha.