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    A couple of weeks ago, I shared my recipe with you for Peach Melba Pie.  Raspberries had been on sale, and trust me, I didn't stop with just enough berries to make the pie.  I had to preserve those berries to enjoy later somehow.  I had an orange needing to be used, and knowing that citrus and berries go great together,  I came up with this simple recipe for Orange Raspberry Jam! 
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     I love the beautiful fresh red color of the jam and the sweet/tart flavor!  It was perfect on english muffins.  Maddy used the jam as a filling in her Vegan Chocolate Cake and it was the perfect bite to have the cake, the frosting and this fruity filling! 

     I did sieve the raspberry pulp to remove the seed, but there are still seeds in the jam.  I may need a finer sieve, but there are a lot fewer than there would have been! 
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     I usually make cute labels for the lids of my jam, but this time I just wrote on the lids.  But, here is a past post when I provided labels: 

Blackberries, Strawberry Jam and Free Canning Labels

    Here are some other jam recipes; 

Blackberry-Lemon Marmalade
​Strawberry jam

     If you love raspberries, you are going to really love this jam!  I hope you give this recipe a try, and if you do, let me know! 
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I am back with another pumpkin recipe! Instead of cookies I'm showing you how to make delicious pumpkin butter to spread on your toast or bagels. My daughter has been enjoying pumpkin butter with her peanut butter sandwiches!

This pumpkin butter is really easy to make and is so delicious.

Now, I canned my pumpkin butter, but I want to give a disclaimer about canning pumpkin butter.

If you get on to the website for the National Center for Home Food Preservation they discourage canning pumpkin puree, and only using pressure canning for cubed pumpkin. They say the problem is that due to pumpkin's low acidity you can't keep it from going bad. However, I have read on other sites that as long as the internal temperature of the pumpkin butter reaches 248 degrees Fahrenheit you'll be ok.

It's up to you. I canned my pumpkin butter using a water bath method. I boiled the pumpkin butter for 1 hour and listed to them all seal shut (it's my favorite canning sound.) If you don't feel comfortable canning the pumpkin butter, you can just fill you jars and freeze them. I actually canned AND froze mine because I made a lot of pumpkin butter and want to give jars to people so I canned them and then froze them so that when I gift the pumpkin butter later I can advise them of what I've done, while ensuring the pumpkin butter's safety when I give it as a gift.

Ok, so this pumpkin butter recipe is for the crock pot. It is so easy. You dump your ingredients in, stir them together, set it for about 3 hours on high, and then stir it up. Then your pumpkin butter will be ready for canning (or freezing!)

Pumpkin butter is the perfect fall jam. It goes great on everything. Mix some pumpkin butter into your oatmeal in the morning. Then enjoy it with a cup of hot chocolate, preferably our pumpkin spice hot cocoa bomb. Doesn't that just sound like the best fall morning?

Homemade Pumpkin Butter

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    I was able to get a good deal on some boxes of peaches and pears from Utah!  So, this past week Lindsey, Maddy, my friend Betty and I did some canning at Lindsey's house.  We did the peaches on one day and the pears 2 days later.  We caught them both at their optimum ripeness!
    I've already shared with you how to can peaches on this post.  But, I want to share a couple of new things we did this time around. I've been canning for a long time, but this dog can always learn new tricks!  

    Every year, when I start to can something, I always refer to the National Center for Home Food Preparation, or NCHFP, to find out if there have been any changes or new developments in canning safety.  Sure enough, this time there were some changes that I want to make you aware of before giving you my recipe for delicious Spiced Pears! 

First of all, they have found that white fleshed peaches are not safe to can!  White fleshed peaches are not acidic enough for water bath canning nor is there a method for pressure canning them.  The best way to preserve them is to freeze them!  Luckily our peaches were yellow! 

Secondly, and I don't know if I just overlooked this before, but the site mentions that Hot packing peaches and pears will give you a better product than raw packing them... Now that one was a shocker to me because my raw packed peaches have always been delicious! 
    From what I learned upon researching that assertion, the problem they have found is that the fruit shrinks during the processing in the water bath.  This causes them to rise up tightly in the jar leaving a lot of liquid at the bottom.  Then, when the fruit falls, the liquid may not cover all of the fruit and the part of the fruit not covered can turn brown, although it is still safe to eat. Hmmm...
     So, we decided to test out this idea when we canned our peaches.  
    

Hot Pack Process

   The Hot Pack process involves making your light syrup as usual but then adding the fruit to it and allowing it to come to a boil all together before adding the fruit and liquid to the jars.  Then, leaving a 1/2 to 1 inch headspace and removing the bubbles, add the lids and process as usual. 

    To test this out, we did our sliced peaches the hot pack way.  But, we noticed that there still was lift as the jars were sealed, but maybe not quite as much because we were able to fit more peaches into a jar.  Then, I did some quarts of peach halves and then made sure that I really packed them in.  Also, I carefully measured the headspace, removed the bubbles and added more boiling syrup as needed.  By being more precise, I didn't notice a big difference in the amount of lift in my raw pack jars to my hot pack jars.  So, frankly, I am probably going to stick with my raw pack method because it is easier, but be more careful to pack tightly, measure headspace carefully and to get those bubbles out.  

Now Let's Talk About Canning Pears! 

    The process of canning pears is a bit simpler than peaches because you don't have to blanch them first to get the skins off.  You can simply peel them with a potato peeler!  It was so great having many hands doing the work together because one of us peeled, one of us sliced and cored and one of us filled the jars and kept an eye on the syrup and everything else!  (We had 3 people working each day as Betty and Maddy came one day each!)
    After our experience with hot packing the peaches, we decided to stick with raw packing the pears.  As you can see in the picture above, there wasn't a lot of lift after the jars were processed.  I made sure to :

• Pack the jars as tightly as possible.  We did slices and halves.  When you do halves, put the cut side down. 
• Make sure the syrup is boiling hot.  Then, carefully ladle it over the pears, using a wide canning funnel.  
• Use a knife or chopstick to ease down between the fruit and the jar to allow bubbles to escape.  Do this all around the jar.  Add more liquid as needed to reach 1/2" headspace.
• Wipe the rim of the jar and add the lid and ring.
• Place in the canner.  When the water boils, process according to your altitude. Check the NCHFP for a chart.
• Lift the jars from the canner and remove them to a towel covered surface.  Listen for the seals to pop!   

Spiced Pears!

    While I was doing research about the hot pack, raw pack thing, I kept seeing ways to add other ingredients to your peaches and pears when you can them.  One thing I saw was cinnamon sticks and whole cloves in the pear jars and I thought that they looked pretty!  I decided to try it with a few of our jars just to see how they turned out. 

1. We used a light syrup made at a 1:3 ratio.  There was 1 cup of sugar to 3 cups of water.  So, If I used 12 cups of water, I mixed in 4 cups of sugar.
2. Boil the syrup and keep it at a low boil until you add it to the jars.
3. While you are packing the jars with pears, add 1 stick of cinnamon and 5-6 whole cloves, scattered throughout the jar. 
4. Fill with the syrup and process as usual.

    Honestly, I was just guessing on the amount of spice to add to the jar.  I didn't add any additional spices to the syrup.  I was concerned that the spice taste wouldn't come through.  But, I was wrong!  These pears are so delicious! They taste just like Fall and I wish that I had done all of the jars like this!  ​I am tempted to buy more pears just to be able to can more spiced ones! These are the type of things that make canning so enjoyable! 

What a simple change and now these are my favorite canned fruit of all time I think.   I know you will love them too! 

Check out these other canning recipes and tips:

    Fresh corn on the cob is one of the joys of summer produce!  What is a summer barbecue without corn on the cob? And if you grow it yourself, it is even better!  I didn't grow corn in my garden this year, but I did find a really good price accidentally in the grocery store, so I decided to take advantage of it and can some to enjoy later in the year.  
    If you are a gardener with a bumper crop of corn that you want to preserve, you are going to love this Corn Salsa recipe.  It is brightly flavored with that south of the border flavor that goes so well on so many things.  My favorite combo is with chicken tacos.  Maddy used it straight out of my pot on her vegan bean tacos! She pronounced the salsa delicious! 

    Another great thing about this corn salsa is that it is quick to preserve!  You can process the pint jars for 15 minutes in a water bath canner rather than the pressure canner because of the lemon and lime juices that are used in the recipe.  
    *Here is a tip from the National Center for Home Food Preservation:  Always use lemon juice that has been bottled commercially because only then can you be sure that the acidity is at the correct level to safely preserve food. 
    The great thing about using lemon juice is that it adds to the brightness and flavor of the recipe rather than detracting from it like vinegar can. This recipe contains both lemon and lime juice.  Lime juice is so traditional with Mexican Food. The flavor of the lime really comes through in this corn salsa recipe. 

    People have told me that they don't enjoy canning corn because they don't enjoy the mess of cutting the corn off of the cob.  I found an answer to that problem in a Fry's Food (Kroger) magazine that is an easy way to cut the corn off the cob with less mess and without the corn cob slipping around as you cut.  I think that you can only get this magazine if you have a Kroger shopping card.  I tried to find a link to the store magazine but couldn't find one.  So, I used their method for cutting the corn off of the cob and took pictures to show you how it worked.  Click on the photos for instructions.

    *Tip for cutting corn from the cob with less mess and slipping!

    After cutting the corn off of the cob, all I had to do was dump it into a big pot with the rest of the ingredients and cook as directed. 

    While the corn salsa simmers, get your jars and lids ready, as well as your water bath canner.  I decided to can pints, so I used my smaller pint canner. I like having both a quart canner and a smaller pint canner mainly because sometimes I can have them both going at once!  Also, the pint canner takes less water so it comes to a boil more quickly and (obviously) saves on water use. Of course, if you want to do more than 7 pints at a time, you can put more jars in the larger canner. It is all up to your own preference. 

    Once your Fresh Corn Salsa comes out of the canner, has sealed and is cool, you need to label it so that you will use it in a timely manner.  It is probably best used within the year, before the next crop of corn comes on the stalk! I have mentioned before that I don't like labeling my jars themselves because it is such a pain getting the sticky label off the jar when you want to reuse it for something else.  That is why I usually write on the lid.  But, sometimes I want a cuter solution.  Also, sometimes writing on the lid doesn't show as well as it does on a label.  So, I have created some labels that fit on the jar lid that you can print and easily write the name of the contents in the jar and the date they were canned! 

    These labels are made to print on Avery labels 94501.  I ordered mine from their website. You can click the button below and print them out for yourself!

    I printed up these labels just in time because tonight I am picking up a case of peaches to can!  I'll be putting them to good use! 
    Have you done much canning lately?  I hope you can give this corn salsa a try! Happy Canning!