I'm Addicted!

These are 3 of my 5 shelves of canned goods.The other two were not as organized.

Can a person be addicted to canning? I think I am.  There are only two of us in our household, but I still want to can everything. I think part of the problem stems from the fact that I ,or we, like to see the vegetables growing, then we get bombarded with so much produce,and of course, we hate to waste.That means we either need to eat it,give it away or can it. Our cucumbers  started producing way more than we can use, but you can only eat so many, and we do give them to every visitor that comes and goes.I would bring them to Mom's, in hopes some of the siblings will drop by to take a few, but then Mom would worry herself sick that they weren't getting to them fast enough.Gas is to expensive to deliver to all the family, and Pop would die a natural death if I even mentioned doing that.If all goes well,a few us us siblings plan to carpool and go to the neighboring town to the big new Amish discount grocery store. They are big hits in this area anymore. I will take some of the excess  produce that day to share with them.

I will be spending the next few days canning. Not fresh produce this time though. I have promised my older freezer to my brother who just recently relocated back to Kentucky and is trying to get a new foothold.The freezer is older. I bought it brand new about 35 or so years ago. It has been a good one, but we found a smaller one on sale at Sears, and we have an extra side-by-side fridge in the basement, so we figured we didn't need this older one. It is a bit larger than our new one. I will be canning the frozen peaches and strawberries which I had frozen initially. We don't need jams and jellies. We are over run with those since we don't make that many jam cakes anymore.That was always a good way to use up some of the last years preserves and the like,but now both of us need to cut back on our eating,plus Pop has sugar.I guess I will could find a good simple recipe and give everyone jam cakes for Christmas this year.That's an idea I may look into.

Looks like we will be having squirrel dumplings for supper. I ran across 2 containers of frozen squirrel while sorting through the freezer's contents. The chickens will be having a feast tonight,too. There are several bags of frozen zucchini and yellow squash that I had saved for zucchini bread and squash casseroles. Way more than we needed.I don't mind tossing a few things like that. The chickens need to eat, too.Strawberries and peaches are too expensive to waste,so I will can them for cobblers and ice cream topping later.