I'm Just A Slow Learner, I Guess

As the weather turns, as our neighbours are hitting the fields on their combines, and as I'm getting my cozy-nesting-mama on... I found myself headfirst in the freezer.

We have two smaller chest freezers. One that we brought with us and one that came with the house. They were both full.

I mean FULL.

I wasn't sure what they were full of, exactly, but there wasn't a lot of room to add anything.

When I decided to investigate and maybe do some cleaning/downsizing/sorting I was surprised by what I found to be taking up all my freezer space.

Suffice it to say, two weeks on, the freezer is nicely organized, three-quarters less full and I'm out of canning jars.

The (dare I say it?) two year old contents of the larger garage freezer is now 9 pints of Nanking cherry syrup, 3 pints of chokecherry syrup, 4 pints of applesauce, 8 pints of Saskatoon berry pie filling and a batch of Nanking cherry jelly.

And I have concluded that even if fruit is carefully prepared, flash-frozen, cored & chopped and nicely stored in 2-3 cup bags... it will not get used once it's frozen.

So. It's taken me a long time to get the memo, but I think it has finally sunk in.

The freezer is useable and the pantry is lovely and full.

One more project, besides slowly adding to my stock of dill pickles, and I will pretty much be done the preserving. Tomorrow I think I'll reopen the 6 quarts of salsa I made and redo it. It's just too sweet and oniony. It reminds me of a delicious relish that Grandma Gustafson served with the roast beef for Sunday dinner at Bible College, so I will re-can maybe two quarts to use for relish, and then throw the rest back into a pot, add more peppers, tomatoes and vinegar, and see if I can't get it tasting more like salsa.

The fun never ends around here!