Canned!

Don't worry - I still have my day job.  But my hobby and second career might as well be food preservation.  It all started 4 summers ago when a garden surplus of tomatoes and green peppers became salsa.  I tried canning cooked salsa without as much success as Christina had making it fresh.  However, I persisted.  I made a very small amount of tomato sauce with an abundance of tomatoes.  The hot red pepper flakes that I added made it too spicy.  However, I persisted.  The next year, we grew pickling cucumbers and dill and I made dill pickles - with some degree of success.  I tweaked the vinegar and salt down to taste and found more success the following year.

But things really began to gel for me once I started making jam.  We enjoy picking strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, peaches, and apples every year.  It made sense to use all the berries we picked and froze, which otherwise would get thrown out after freezer burn set in.

But my obsession really took off once I was introduced to a small, neglected concord grape planting in the back of Gramp R's neighbor's house.  It smelled of grape jelly, and thus it became.

The rest is history: grape jelly, rasberry jam, strawberry jam, peach jam, strawberry rhubarb jam, and perhaps the best: mixed berry jam (blueberry/cherry/raspberry).

I also can peach halves.  I tried apple mint jelly this year, but the apples were too dry.

What should I try next?  Should I try that tomato sauce again?