Can, Can, Can You Do The Can-Can?

I spent a long day in the kitchen, we're talking from 9 am until 8 pm. Admitedly, some of that time was spent eating breakfast and lunch and getting dinner ready, but the rest of the time I was canning food. The pantry is pretty full at this point and I still plan to can pears in a couple of weeks. So here's the canning totals for the summer so far:

saur kraut 12 quarts

marinara sauce 16 pints

pickles 4 quarts

blueberry jam 7 half-pints

strawberry/blackberry jam 4 half-pints

strawberry/nectarine sauce 6 half-pints

raspberry sauce 6 half-pints

nectarines 6 quarts, 2 pints, 27 half-pints

Not bad if I do say so myself. All of that is paid-for, preservative/additive-free food, made from produce that was in picked ripe and in-season. The nice part is that so far the majority of my canning jars are second generation (purchased last year), so the cost to can food has been lower. I've still had to purchase new lids and a couple of cases of quart sized jars, but that's very manageable. Last year was the expensive year, purchasing all of the equipment to make the canning process easy.

All-in-all, with the canned food and the food I've frozen, it seems that we're making progress towards eating in a more local and healthy way than we have in the past. Woooo-hooooo!