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Mack
Member
07-22-2002
| Monday, July 20, 2026 - 3:33 pm 
Carey is now calling herself a “canning geek”. 🙂 Just happened I was going to the grocery store and was actually there when she sends me a text she wants mini cucumbers and some fresh dill. Okay, no problem. Turns out she’s decided to try dill pickle spears. Bought enough, per her instructions, to just do six pints. Kind of an experiment since she’s never canned those before. And she forgot pickling spices but rather than send me back to the store Amazon came to rescue and those will be here tomorrow. I helped her slice up the cucumbers and they are in a brine bath for the next 24 hours.
As for “geeking” she now has plans for canning sliced peaches, peach butter, and peach jam. Of course she has plans, in no particular order, for apples, strawberries, and tomatoes. Each of which will be processed and canned into two or three versions. Meantime she is collecting various tools she wants to prep each. Amazon keeps coming through and lately something has arrived almost daily for the last week. 😳😀
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Juju2bigdog
Member
10-26-2000
| Monday, July 20, 2026 - 9:18 pm
Bwahahahaha!!! Oh, you newbie retirees are SO cute!
Oopsie, I have apparently missed this whole thread, since it was started when we were packing up to come home from South Padre Island in Jan. 2026.
But I also don't know anything about canning. Bigdog probably knows a lot, but I have never encouraged him to can, as we had to go see the world first.
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Mack
Member
07-22-2002
| Tuesday, July 21, 2026 - 5:52 am
Carey and I both come from families rooted in the traditional Midwest from Michigan to Missouri. Our parents were all Depression Era babies and children which means their parents, our grandparents, lived through and supported their families through the Depression. There weren’t the huge grocery chain stores of today back then plus few had the money to buy food.
Raising and preserving their own food was how most survived. While I’m old I’m not that old so I really didn’t experience that but my maternal grandmother never gave that up. My parents really never got into that way of life but my father was in military and we moved too much to have a garden or raise food animals and certainly no way to pack and move potentially hundreds of pounds of preserved foods. Carey’s parents on the other hand canned literally up to the day they passed away. Last time we saw Carey’s father alive he was just preparing their garden for spring planting but he passed six weeks later of a heart attack with her mother passing 83 days later. Today Carey’s sister cans and has for years and Carey is returning to canning. Probably a comfort thing and not a necessity.
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Mack
Member
07-22-2002
| Saturday, July 25, 2026 - 7:08 am
Well our road trip to get peaches kind of turned out to be a bust at least as far peaches are concerned. We had heard that this year’s crop was smaller and more limited due to a late freeze on St Patrick’s Day. “Smaller and limited” really should have been decimated. There were no local peaches available and many of the small peach stands were actually closed. We did stop at two places, both kind of “mom and pops” operations. Both businesses have been family owned and run since the early 1900’s. They are getting by but both were selling other produce like tomatoes, corn, onions, cucumbers, blackberries, etc., sourced from either their gardens or local farmers. Both stands also had a pretty good assortment of canned products like syrups, sauces, preserves, and so on. In fact at one place they were processing and canning in a back area. The fellow doing the canning was actually a direct descendent of the great grandfather who founded the business in 1926. We bought a few items at each place, one because they looked good and two because we wanted to provide some support.
The road trip was not all without some good besides our few purchases at the stands we were also in the middle of Texas wine country. Our route took us by one of our favorite wineries so we stopped there for a tasting and came home with a case of assorted wines. 🙂
As for peaches we did stop at our local and favorite grocery store on the way home. While not from the area north of San Antonio there were other orchards in Texas not hit by the late freeze so fresh peaches are available. Today we start the processing with peach butter first up. 🙂
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Mack
Member
07-22-2002
| Wednesday, July 29, 2026 - 4:55 pm
Today was peach preserves. That actually was a two day process with peeling peaches…..a giant pain by the way but I was involved and did my share. Carey then processed them which means heating, making a syrup, and other steps I don’t know or understand. Those had to sit overnight to marinate or maybe season would be a better description. Today was finishing the canning process in the water bath and that’s all done.
A little break of a day or two and Carey wants to make a batch of her grandmother’s chili sauce. Not a biggie for me but I will help. The carrot on the stick for me will be homemade salsa maybe next week. I love a good salsa. 😬
Right now is the peak of locally grown produce and we’re trying to take advantage of that. Probably will take a break until late September or early October when Washington state apples start showing up here. Texas is not a big apple producer and I grew up with Washington apples.
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Juju2bigdog
Member
10-26-2000
| Wednesday, July 29, 2026 - 9:54 pm
Our summer growing season is just coming on. The best blueberry and raspberry-picking seasons passed while we were on the recent 3-week Alaska cruise. Heirloom tomatoes are just beginning. Sweet corn is about two weeks out, per a local farm I called today.
We live in the raspberry capitol of the USA, and also have a LOT of blueberries.
Bigdog would have been gung ho on canning most all of our 53 years together, because his mother, born in 1905, canned almost all of her adult life, which lasted to age 111. But I always discouraged it, because I knew it would become an obsession, and I would rather have traveled the world, which we did. Bigdog tends to fetish on things. He would not have been capable of dabbling in canning. He would have had to think about better ways to can all day every day, until the top of my head blew off about five years in.
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Mack
Member
07-22-2002
| Friday, July 31, 2026 - 6:46 am
Have to smile about Bigdog and potential canning obsession. I think I’m living that life. 😱😳🙂 We went to the grocery store yesterday and bought tomatoes, etc., for Carey’s chili sauce which we’re making today. While we were in the produce area Carey commented several times “I can can that”. Then she’s in the regular grocery isles and picking up a jar of this or that and saying “this cost such and such and I can buy the produce and do it for a lot less”. I keep reminding her parents, grandparents, and others lived in farming communities. They raised much of what they canned in garden plots or traded what they raised with others for something they didn’t grow themselves. At one time her father owned a small HVAC company. He’d often work on systems where the client didn’t have a lot of money. He had to be paid for the cost of parts, etc., but he’d sometimes trade off his labor for several flats of this or a bushel or more of that. Carey remembers one year or more they never bought eggs because her father was getting paid in eggs from a small chicken farmer.
As for mentioning berries and the Pacific Northwest that reminded me of my two day career as a berry picker. At least back in the 60’s when I was in junior high school (middle school today) there were not and maybe still aren’t machines to pick the various berry crops. It was all done by hand by a mixture of migrant workers, gypsies, and a few junior/senior high school kids. Talk about hard work! Convinced me I was going to college. 😬
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Juju2bigdog
Member
10-26-2000
| Friday, July 31, 2026 - 10:13 pm
(((Hugs, Mack))) Try not to get to the top of your head blowing off stage.
There are indeed now raspberry picking machines, so presumably blueberries as well. Which reminds me, we are coming to the end of the raspberry picking season, so we should probably get to the berry fields before the end of the season.
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Mack
Member
07-22-2002
| Saturday, August 01, 2026 - 5:21 am
The chili sauce is all canned, cooled, labeled, and ready for me to put them in our makeshift storage. By makeshift I mean we’re using the cupboards above our washing machine and dryer but Carey eventually wants to move the canned goods to the pantry. We’ve already freed up maybe 15 to 20% of the pantry space by getting rid of our hosting equipment. When we were both working and were division chiefs we’d host things like Christmas parties, beginning and end of summer parties, and occasional smaller dinners. Obviously we’re both retired now and so our most of our old staffs so we haven’t hosted a party in years.
As for our next canning session right now it is a salsa maybe next weekend. Carey has said that will be it until fresh Washington apples become available. There are some early crop now but I suspect a lot of what we have locally are refrigerated from last year.
Of course I’m not totally sure we’ll have a break as Carey has been flipping through the canning books she’s acquired and quite a stack of handwritten recipes from her mother, grandmothers, and other assorted relatives. Who knows…….😳😬
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Juju2bigdog
Member
10-26-2000
| Saturday, August 01, 2026 - 10:10 pm
You're a good egg, Mack! Good thing you've already traveled most of the world and can now lean heavily into home arts.
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Mack
Member
07-22-2002
| Sunday, August 02, 2026 - 5:04 am
Not done traveling yet. Off to the South Pacific in January. Not much canning to do in the middle of the winter….I hope. 😬🤞
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