Step One...part one

Step one down my sustainable living path was to a) learn how to put up food (AKA-Canning) and then b) use local &/or in season produce to start to build up a store house of home-canned foods. Well last week I took my fist baby step towards that goal. I put up 6 pounds of clementines! It was so much fun!

I sat in front of the TV and peeled and de-pithed all those clementines and I only ate the ones that I ripped up.

I bought a bunch of jars from Weis & Walmart. I really loved the sticker on the packaging. I'll hop on and off this soapbox quickly-but we MUST buy local when we can and give all the support and dollars we can to American factories!

After that I boiled some water with a little bit of sugar in the bottom to make a light syrup. The stuff that the clementines will swim in until we eat them! I stuffed those clementine segements into the clean & sterilized jars and poured the syrup into the jars using the handy-dandy Bell funnel.

Then I used the air-bubble remover to get out all the bubbles I could. Now, are there any experts here? Cause I thought I got all those bubbles out, but when the jars were boiling bubbles were still appearing. What's up with that?

Then all the jars went into the jacuzzi pot and got boiled and boiled! I pulled them out when they were done, set them on dish towels on the counter and there they sit! A bit after their bath, I could here these little "pops" coming from the kitchen. I liked the sound of that! They look so pretty. Pretty enough to eat! But those are our winter treats when we cannot get cheap clementines around here. So, this weekend I'm gonna make a spot in the unfinished basement and start to store the jars down there.

I think this weekend we are finally gonna go to that blueberry farm. I found one that lets you pick blueberries FOR FREE. You pick a pint for yourself, you pick a pint for them and yours is free. You pick a bucket for yourself, you pick a bucket for them and your bucket is free. How cool is that? Do you think I could train chihuahuas to pick blueberries?