Canning and preserving? ME?

I've become interested lately in canning and preserving. Eating healthy, while staying on a budget, can be really difficult. But sometimes you run across great deals on seasonal produce. Right now, tangerines are really cheap in Florida. This past summer, I was at Publix one day and corn was so cheap that the manager just gave us twelve ears of corn. Wouldn't it have been nice if I could have canned a lot of that corn?

But I'll be honest. The idea of canning something scares me to death. My grandfather gardens and "puts up" tons of fruits and vegetables every summer. I always sort of took for granted that whenever I go home he gives me cases of organic green beans and tomatoes that he's canned. Now that I'm in charge of the grocery shopping for my family (on a budget!), I realize how spoiled I was when I lived in Mississippi to have all of that free produce given to me!

So. I've decided to do something about it, and try to learn to can and preserve. There's a growing movement of people who are going back to the old-school way of eating. They buy seasonal and responsibly grown produce and preserve it. Some urbanites are even keeping chickens to have an endless supply of organic eggs. I'm not quite there yet...

But I did successfully make apple butter and can it! It turned out a little on the thin side because I added too much water... But surprisingly, the process was easy!

Here is what I did:

Night before:
Peel and core 3 to 4 pounds of apples. Slice them into quarters, and place them in a crock pot. Then, mix 2 cups of brown sugar, 1 teaspoon nutmeg, 1 teaspoon ground ginger (optional), 1/2 teaspoon of ground cloves, and 1/2 teaspoon of allspice with 3/4 cup of water (or you can use apple cider). Pour that mixture over the apples, and set your crock pot on low overnight (approximately nine hours).

Mine turned out a little thin, so I cooked it an additional hour on high with the lid off, and it thickened up.

That morning:
Put your Mason jars in the dishwasher (if your dishwasher has a heat dry setting). Only put the jars, not the lids. This "preps" the jars for canning.

After the jars are clean and hot, fill them with the apple butter, leaving 1/4 of an inch at the top of the jar. This is called the "headspace." Attach the lids. Boil enough water in a big pot for the jars to be completely covered by an inch of water. Then put the filled jars in the boiling water and boil for ten minutes. Take the jars out and let cool. You should hear loud pops as the jars seal.

Then you have apple butter! Store somewhere cool, and refrigerate after opening. The process works best with jar lifters and canning racks, but I don't have those things yet, so I did the process my own way.

Serve the apple butter on fresh baked bread and you have a breakfast of champions! Here are pictures of how mine turned out.