We are looking ahead to another busy week in the canning department and I have to find some time to get lesson plans figured out for Colton. He will be a seventh grader this year and all I can say is that I have a sad heart. He is growing up so fast! In a few short years he will be driving a car and it seems like days ago we were waiting for him to take his first steps! He is in Boy Scouts and we work on being a good role model and doing everything with a happy heart. Today he stepped up and helped can tomatoes with out being asked and helped yesterday with apples.

Our family went to the orchard and picked apples Friday and we came home with two bucket-fulls. I made Caramel Apple Jam Friday night and put Crockpot Apple Butter in the crockpot before bed. Saturday morning I woke up and ran the apples through the food processor then put the mixture into jars. I promised to make pepper jelly this year so I chopped up jalapenos and made that so it could be in the boiling water bath with the Apple Butter. I even broke down and finished off the apples today by making apple sauce which will be really tasty this winter! I claim I am done with jams and jellies, but I will probably make Carrot Cake Jam and Banana Bread Jam for Christmas gifts again.

James finished digging potatoes and we ended up canning 7 more quarts and dehydrating 10 trays of dices. I think we are down to one and a half baskets of them left! James has been a big help this weekend and so has Colton. I am blessed to have the extra help this time of year!

I have been trying to can meal starters and meals in jars for this winter as well. Tonight we tried the meatloaf and after being afraid it would taste like dogfood was impressed it tasted like meatloaf! I love the idea of being able to go to the storage room in the basement and pull a few jars and have dinner ready in 10 minutes! I still need to throw some cream of mushroom soup mixes together and some from scratch cake mixes together and get them sealed in bags but will save that for another day!