More so-called weird snacks

For breakfast today, my daughter had a banana, water and peanut butter/jelly on my multigrain biscuits I made yesterday.

I started to prepare her snack. I was thinking maple-vanilla yogurt from
Klein Farm. She's been pretty good about avoiding dairy so a shot of yogurt will be good.

As I was adding some frozen raspberries to keep it cold, she came into the kitchen.

"Are you packing another weird snack?" she asked.

"Is yogurt and raspberries weird?"

"Yes."

"I thought other kids brought those tube yogurts."

"Yeah. And some bring fruit snacks so that's similar."

Me, muttering, "fruit snacks... As if that's healthy... Do you want something else."

"No," she said.

"Do you want some almonds in top?"

"Yeah!"

Me, after contemplating, "Yesterday you had an apple. That's not weird."

"It is when I bring it."

"I'm sorry."

She shrugs.

Canning Ball Fiesta Salsa

I have two very similar goals when it comes to my canning. 1. To save what we can't eat fresh out of the garden and 2. To save the excess of fresh produce we may get into the house.

I'm a novice canner and a half-baked gardener so I try to get some quality food for my family and to use that food to the farthest extent.

But I'm a small batch canner and I don't see that changing. In about two hours, I can make a few pints.

Not the drinking kind.

Today I'm using Ball's Fiesta Salsa mix to season some garden veggies into salsa. Someone gave me the mix.

What they called for and what I did ate slightly different.

We chopped:
- 3 huge tomatoes from the farm stand
- 3 tiny tomatoes from our garden
- 2 small peppers from our garden
- not quite 1/4 cup red onion
- 1/2 cucumber from our garden
- 1 large glove garlic

Yield: 6 cups

In my large Le Creuset saucepan I mixed:
- 4 tablespoons white vinegar, 5% acidity
- 2 tablespoons strawberry basil vinegar
- 1 packet Ball Fiesta Salsa mix
- 3/4 teaspoon fresh ground pepper

Add vegetable/tomato mix. Heat to boiling. Simmer 5 minutes. Pack with 1/2 inch headspace.

I have 2 pints (one with more liquid than I'd like) and 2 half jelly jars. 35 minutes in boiling water canner.

Fruit canning

We went to Piazza Farm this weekend for produce, including the best New Jersey watermelon.

Today we made a light syrup of sugar and local honey to can mixed fruit.

Our yield was 3.5 pints. Our fruit included: three peaches (one very large), two plums, two red plums, two white nectarines, two nectarines and a pear.

Waiting impatiently for them to come out of the hot water bath.