Making Room in the Freezer

As the fall harvest begins, I was finding several different bags of fruit in the freezer from last year that we hadn't used yet.  On top of that, we had an obnoxious amount of rhubarb this spring already!  What started to be a batch of Huckleberry jam, turned into an afternoon of making jam and sauces! 

 

The jams I used from last year's berries were huckleberry, raspberry, strawberry rhubarb and cherry. My favorite recipe book is The Ball Complete Book of Canning, which if you don't have, you should get!  It has every recipe that you could possibly use and more. Only one recipe have we not likde and that was the Cherry Jam, where the optional ingredients we didn't like.  We leave them out and we love it!

 

 I still had over 30 bags of rhubarb in my freezer (what can I say we love rhubarb coffee cake all winter long, but this was a little much!) so was checking out the recipes in my canning book.  I've made Strawberry Rhubarb Pie filling and Rhubarb sauce, which my family didn't care for the texture.  Then I found a recipe for Victorian BBQ, which used rhubarb and raisons in it.  I thought, why not?  The jars in the far right row of the picture are the BBQ sauce.  I slow cooked a roast with the Victorian BBQ over it and it was a hit with the whole family!

 

This took me about three hours in one afternoon, and I now have about 35 jars of jam, 7 jars of Victorian BBQ sauce, and more room in the freezer for the incoming harvest!

 

If you're wondering how I have so much energy after canning everything in the freezer, raising 5 kids and homeschooling, you should check out my favorite Energy Drink!