All Day Canning Session

When I went to bed Wednesday night, I fully expected to spend all day Thursday stitching. We were having leftovers for dinner so that was done. Laundry was caught up. Nothing left to do but stitch, right? Nope!

I got up and remembered our neighbor had brought over okra and I hadn’t done anything with it so I grabbed that bucket, decided to can it instead of freeze drying it. I have a lot of it freeze dried so I wanted to can some. I like canned cut okra to add to soups and gumbo, to make okra and tomatoes or just to stew it down with onions. I also love the small pods left whole to add to peas – like purple hull peas or black eyed peas so I cut up the larger pods and trimmed the stem off the smaller pods. I put up 4 quarts of cut okra. I normally use about 3/4 cup of okra in soups or gumbo but I can save the rest of the jar and use it for stewed okra or okra and tomatoes. I had some 3/4 pint jars – not sure why I have those but it was a whole 12 jar case so I used those for canning the small pods – 9 jars. Those things took three loads in the Nesco canner.

Since Vince was off to the store to get potatoes, I decided to go ahead and cut the potatoes I had leftover in a bag and make them French Fries and can them so I did that. Then I figured I could get one batch of fries from the new potatoes so . . here’s the results of a whole day of canning.

4 quarts of cut okra
9 three quarter pint jars of whole okra
4 quarts French Fries
4 pints French Fries

Today I’ll probably only make three loads of fries in pints – 12 jars. I could always get out the big stove top canner but it takes a lot of time to peel and slice those potatoes so I think I’ll just stick with the three loads in the electric canner for today.