Bountiful Harvest

I've mentioned more than once that my dad so kindly puts in a garden for me every year.   As in he buys the starts and/or seeds, plants them, and then graciously lets us (who am I kidding? the Hubs) come and pick all the produce and take it home.

A very wonderful dad indeed.

This year we had a crazy hot summer and he also planted a crazy amount of tomato starts.  So with those two factors combined, we had quite the tomato harvest.  So I have been canning.  Like the most I have ever done in one summer.  I've dabbled in it here and there for the last several years, but this year? 

Girlfriend did a TON (at least for this one!!!) of canning.  I've canned seven pints of yummy cucumber relish, 11 quarts of sliced peaches, and finally 7 pints + 31 quarts of garden variety tomatoes.  Between the plethora of yellow and heirloom tomatoes, we've had some of thee tastiest roasted tomato soup (I cannot even begin to describe how divine that was!) as well as the fire roasted salsa.  And those were using the fresh tomatoes--we haven't started on the canned ones yet. 

You won't find such colorful canned tomatoes at any local grocery store, that's for sure!

I picked blueberries again this summer, so I have about 3 gallon size freezer bags full of those babies.  And I made blueberry jam.  Strawberry is still my personal favorite, but the kids haven't complained, so we'll be eating on that this winter too. 

I stocked up on fresh peaches several times at the grocery store when they were a good price, so I have about a bag and a half of frozen peach slices--which will help make great smoothies as well as yummy crisps.  #comfortfood

I haven't really even dug in yet to all my pumpkins awaiting to be pureed, so I have lots of pumpkin puree coming as well.  

Lastly, our matchmaker gifted us a ton of rhubarb, which is sliced and frozen in freezer bags as well.  Not the Hubs favorite, but he certainly didn't complain about rhubarb peach crisp I made the other night!

I also want to can some apple slices and hopefully I will still have a chance to get that done. 

While I know I haven't put up our entire eats for the winter like so many other wonderful (wonder woman!!!) bloggers out there, I'm still kinda proud of myself.  ;)

Plus? 

Thank you, Jesus, for these immense blessings.  It's no coincidence that money is super tight right now and we have all this wonderful (mostly) free food that we have been able to preserve for the coming months. 

Blessings, indeed.