Drawing Table

From this, gobs of canning jars in my way...

To this, squash and pumpkin heaven!  I'll be spending some time tomorrow drawing pumpkins, etc., now that my other drawnig table has been emptied of Falls bounty.

Potato Leek Soup

Tonights Dinner Menu

Potato Leek Soup

(the extra will be canned up in quart jars)

Ciabatta Bread

Orange Marmalade

Ok after an agonizing hour of boiling it all down I forgot, yes I forgot, to photograph the final result before we put it in the jars. Trust me when I say it was much darker than the photos below and looked like orange Marmalade!

Cranberry Applesauce

Or saucy applesauce as we like to call it, unforutnately it didn't come out nearly as chunky as we like it, frustrated with the sauce sticking to the bottom of the pan I buckled under and used the stick blender to break the sauce down even further. Well... you know what they say about good intentions right. So it's mostly very creamy sauce, it tastes wonderful and looks beautiful but...

I also fell short on the cranberries, the sauce really needed about four more pounds of cranberries to give it that tart flavor we like and so well. I have one jar that didn't seal for some reason I guess we will have to make the ultimate sacrifice and eat that jar of sauce now!!! As you can see I enjoyed a cinnamon roll with some sauce.

Lid Lifter

The magnet is strong enough to pick up three or four lids at a whack.

Steam coming off of the boiling water.

Damaged lid used for demonstrating this technique - it was this or throw it away.

Dh came up with this idea it's a strong magnet attached to my tongs it does a nifty job of removing lids from the hot water w/o getting burned. He bought the magnet at Radio Shack back in the dark ages, circa 1982, for a whole fifty cents.

Non Slip Jars

These were in the bags of jars that dh's co-worker gave him, they are WAY cool!

Have You Any Canning Jars???

Yes sir, yes sir, seven bags full! And two boxes to spare as well.

Canning Jars

I scored a three quarter pint jar for 25 cents today at a yard sale, no kidding! I didn't even know they existed but in reality I could really go with a couple dozen of these babies in the photo above the three quarter pint is the second from the left.

Left to right: Pint jar, three quarter pint, half pint, quarter pint! To make the set really interesting I'd need a quilted glass wide mouth pint jar.

Black Raspberry Jam - Done

I tried a new method tonight instead of using the instructions to make jam, the ones that come in the pectin box, I used the BBB's strawberry jam recipe. AND the jam actually set up!!! So I'm quite happy right now especially after my last two batches of jam "failed" to set up, they'll make excellent sauce but I was aiming for jam not sauce.