Another canning binge begins

I thought I was done preserving foods for this year. I made a gazillion batches of pickles of various types, having made the mistake of buying a bushel of cucumbers from the local fruit stand -- I cannot grow enough cucumbers in our glacial till garden soil to count on having enough to do anything with -- so filled a lot of pint jars with cucumbers, vinegar, and various spices. I pressure canned a couple dozen pints of green beans. I made 3 batches of pickled beets. The S.O. reminded me last week that the plum trees actually had plums this year so I made plum jam. And I thought that was it.

Then I noticed the tree that has really good pie apples had a fair number of apples this year, so now I'm giving serious thought to canning apple pie filling. The tree next to that particular tree yields fruit that is quite good for jelly and applesauce. . . so, yep, there's now a whole lot of jelly jars sitting on the counter waiting to be washed.

And then there are the green tomatoes left in the garden. This was not a particularly good year for tomatoes -- we had major issues with blossom end rot; apparently our garden suffers from calcium deficiency -- but there are enough green tomatoes out there for at least one batch of green tomato pickles. The other day I stumbled across a recipe for green tomato pickles that includes jalapenos. So you guess it. I'm contemplating making green tomato pickles sometime in the next 48 hours.

Why does it have to be within the next 48 hours? Because in the midst of the canning binge, I'll also be prepping the Guppy to hit the road. The S.O. has the bunk-over-the-cab area done -- insulation in place, a new sheet of paneling tacked up to replace the one that was there (that cheap paneling doesn't survive being pulled off very well) -- so I am now free to finish packing various supplies and making sure nothing's going to bounce around too much when we pull out of here on Saturday morning. Today is Wednesday. That gives me basically 3 days to indulge my atavistic desire to fill a metaphorical pantry. I may have to make another trip to the produce stand, though, because it just hit me I haven't made apple marmelade in a long, long time. I think I need to buy some oranges.