Canning - Ketchup and Beans

I am so thankful to have a day to catch up on cleaning and also a few days 'here and there' to get some canning done. I feel like a real 'keeper at home'.

The other day I canned 21qts of lentils. The day after that I canned 49 more quarts of black beans, lentils, garbanzo beans and potatoes. Today I am cleaning :) :) and canning ketchup. Here are some photos; not all the beans are pictured - 3 did not seal so they are in our fridge and we used three last evening. And in case you were wondering, I used Tattler lids on all of these. Here is a link to a post I did on Tattlers if you are interested. Have a great day!

I had to edit this to include a picture of the finished ketchup and my recipe if anyone is interested ...

Ketchup - yields 9 pints plus a little extra for lunch :)
12 - 6oz cans of tomato paste (or use your homemade stuff if you have it)
1 1/4c vinegar (acv or white; I used a mixture of both in this particular batch)
1 1/4c sweetener (I used 3/4c honey and 1/2c rapadura)
1 1/2t garlic powder/granules
1T onion powder/granules
1 1/2t allspice
3T salt
2t dry mustard
1 1/2t celery salt
6c water

I like to put the paste in the pan first, stir it up good, add the spices, sweetener and vinegar, stir it up good again, and then gradually add in the water. This seems to help smooth out the lumps a little easier.

Simmer and adjust seasonings to suit your own tastes. Fill jars and top with lid and band as per normal canning directions. Process in a boiling water bath for 15 minutes. Set on towel or cooling rack till completely cool. Remove bands, clean jars, check seals, store.

Progress

We are thankful for the green houses - the one is still providing lots of spinach, lettuce, kale, beet greens and growing a few new things, and the other is housing all of our seedlings (they are mostly full-blown plants by now) and also our neighbour's seedlings/plants.

The rabbits were attacked by dogs and now we only have two left. Live and learn.

The bee hive is repaired and two brothers surprised us with two home-made hives :) :) The boys did some work last fall for a man and he still owes them money ... they hope to collect that and use it towards getting the hives ready.

Brianna and my sewing business is really taking off! I don't know if I ever made it public on my blog or not, but here is the Etsy link: Modestly Covered if anyone is interested. We have a blog too but it's pretty much the same as the store: Modestly Covered Blog. She does all the sewing for now and I do all the other stuff, but I do hope to have time to help her sew soon. She just does so good at it ... I might mess it all up! But I can at least cut things out, right? She is finished with a few tunics that I plan to post maybe today or tomorrow. We are sticking mostly to ready-made things right now due to time issues but hope to offer more custom order items soon. Anyone can request a custom order though :).

The boys have been busy as usual ... not only with work but also with the garden. We've been helping them as much as we can with the gardening.

The chickens are all doing well. The roosters are loud as ever (we really need to get them out of the city and might just eat them to solve the problem). We added 5 meat chickens and two ducks - the ducks might be for meat as well, I'm not sure yet.