Canning Screwups

I'm starting to think that this whole canning thing may not be the right choice for me. I've been having fun...and I get really excited for each new recipe that we try...and my teacher/friend, Celest, is awesome and SO understanding...but I'm not sure how much more I can possibly screw up! I mean seriously...it's been one thing after another and now I don't have a whole lot to show for all of the hard work and money. Let's recap what we have done so far this summer...

1. Strawberry Jam/Frozen Strawberries/Strawberry Freezer Jam - This was probably our most successful canning activity. We picked fresh berries from a local strawberry patch and made about 35 jars of the tastiness, freshest strawberry jam! We also froze a couple of cookie sheets full of berries and made several batches of freezer jam too. The biggest catastrophe we ran into after all that is that my 6-8 containers of freezer jam had to be completely thrown out when I accidentally forgot to lock the freezer door in our garage. Everything melted, including a TON of meat and all my freezer jam. It was very sad.

2. Bacon Green Beans - This process started out great. Celest warned me that snapping the beans would be a real pain, but I actually didn't mind it! In fact, it was kind of fun! We got all of the green beans prepped and canned with just a little bit of bacon on top for flavoring. Everything seemed to go really well...until we discovered that a ton of the jars didn't seal!!! We lost more than HALF of what we canned and having to empty those jars were the WORST. I had no idea something could smell so incredibly awful!

3. Pickled Beets - Celest canned just a few jars of pickled beets on her own and they look great. The jars sealed, but we will have to wait another month or so for them to pickle before we can eat them.

4. Salsa - Salsa was the screw up that made me want to cry the most. Celest and I decided we would each make a batch of a different type of salsa on our own and then give the other half of what we made. This past weekend I spent a good part of Saturday and Sunday chopping and mixing and cooking and canning. I made 16 pint jars of salsa. They all sealed and they looked so pretty on the counter!! I had such a feeling of accomplishment for successfully completing the task, as per the instructions and actually getting all of the jars to seal too........BUT...it was a few hours later that I realized the salsa had burned. The pot was so big, a bunch of the veggies had burned in the center and I never even noticed until I washed the pot. At first I thought maybe the salsa wasn't affected by it, but ultimately it was. The consistency was great...and everything tasted o.k............it was the after taste that made you question what was 'wrong' with it. I had a couple of friends also try it out and they agreed. It was edible...but had a slightly burnt taste to it. At that point I dumped it all out because I could no longer stomach my burnt salsa. All that work down the drain!

5. Pickles - Last, but finally not least, we're working on pickles. On Sunday we filled 21 quart jars with cucumbers, garlic and dill and all of them sealed. We have just as many jars to go, so those will hopefully get done in the next week or so. Celest is also planning to make sweet gherkins, though I'm not sure when or how. She is Wonder Woman! I just hope the pickles taste as yummy as we hope they will after pickling for a couple of months!

So there you have it...my canning adventures...for which I have lost more than I have made. I am planning to try another batch of salsa this upcoming weekend, so I hope I am successful. If not, it's quite possible I will have a major freakout and start banging my head on the wall...