Overkill or Underutilized?

Every spring, I jot down in my canning journal what we have left in the pantry and freezer.  This helps me determine how much I want to preserve during the coming summer. 

On May 18th, I took stock and this is what we still had...

In the freezer:
3 quarts red raspberries
3 pints chopped zucchini
1 pint crushed strawberries (I just couldn't let us eat this last one)
7 pints beet hummus
5 pints chopped peaches
18 quarts green beans
9 jars roasted tomatoes
grape pie filling for 3 pies
2 gallon bags bell peppers
1 gallon bag chard
10 quarts applesauce
7 quarts chopped rhubarb
3 quarts carrot soup
3 quarts straight grape juice
10- 1 cup portions pesto
4 wedges of pesto torte

In the pantry:
10 quarts grape juice (with sugar)
51 quarts nectarines
6 quarts tomato soup
55 pints tomato sauce
14 pints salsa
8 jelly jars mint jelly
12 jelly jars peach jam
7 pints grape jam
32 quarts applesauce

* Recipes/instructions for everything listed can be found under my Preserving page at the top of this blog.

It may look like we hardly ate anything, but what we put up last summer was significantly more.  It is widely recommended that you should use home-canned items within a year (and that is my recommendation to you).  We, on the other hand, aim to eat them within two years, so I won't be pitching anything yet.  I make sure to pull the items from the previous summer to the front to be used first- in this way they get eaten before the two year mark anyway.

So, the red flags this year were...

Green beans:  We ate a lot of them this winter, but we could've eaten more.  The trap that can ensue is that even though we won't need to freeze as much this summer, we may end up with a lot of green beans and therefore feel compelled to freeze more.  We'll try to resist this compulsion and give away the excess instead, especially because we've been freezing a lot of snow peas.

Canned Nectarines:  Here again, we ate some, but could have eaten more.  Last summer was the first time we canned such a large amount.  They're so much easier to can than peaches since you don't have to peel them, but the kids didn't love the peels, so I would slip off the skins for them (still MUCH easier than peeling).  To be honest, I just kept forgetting they were in there.  I may write nectarines on my forehead.  Anyway, we won't can any this summer, which is awesome.

Applesauce:  We still have 42 quarts left (out of 179), some of which we'll continue to eat, but with fresh fruit available, we'll choose fresh.  I'll likely cut back our amount for next year just a tad.

Tomato Sauce:  This is such a staple for us that I always hate to think of running out of it- no danger of that this year!  I guess I could've been making spaghetti more often.  The pizza every week and the occasional lasagna and baked ziti wasn't sufficient for using all 130 pints up.
 

It hardly ever comes out exactly right.  There are always things I wish we had more of and there are always "leftovers".  Each year, we tweak and plan, but with a growing family with changing (some for the good, some not) tastes, it's impossible.  Just keep good notes and plan the best way you can.  Can.  Get it?


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