The Can-Can

Typically this would be thought of as that dance where scantily clad women stand in a long line and do abnormally high kicks that no normal person could do without wreaking havoc on a myriad of muscles and other body parts. Not so in this case! The dance I'm referring to, well-known by many LDS families, is the one that only comes around once a year (thankfully), and includes actual cans (or jars as we call them), and loads of fresh produce from the gardens we so lovingly planted and cared for all summer long!

That's right... Canning! The dance where women prance around a crowded kitchen wearing nothing but grubby, vegetable stained clothing, with differing tasks laid out on every available table or counter space, while the room temperature slowly rises to stifling! You've either done it, participated in it, helped with it, watched it, or in my case, was ruined by it in your childhood and swore you'd never do it again! But... we planted a garden (too big of one I might add!)... and indeed I did cave to canning!

Here's what we canned: Diced Tomatoes, Carrots (many, many carrots!), Carrot Juice & Apple Pie Filling (Yum!).

Here's what it looked like:

Behind the scenes of carrot canning! Please note that as more & more carrots came from the ground... all we could do was laugh!

What we had to work with!(Our best educated guess was somewhere around 7,000 carrots)

In the process

The finished product (not all, but some!)


The can-can gave us 6 pints of tomatoes (with more to come as more ripen), 68 pints of carrots, 9 quarts of carrot juice & 7 quarts of apple pie filling. Now before you go making fun... we are aware that these amounts can, in no way, compete with the masses of production that other, more experienced canners are capable of. However, we are not those more experienced people (Karen is, but I'm far from it!), and our very first canning expedition turned out to be a success, and we are happy with our quantities of production! (Especially the carrots!)

Footnote: We have learned a lot of garden lessons this year with our very first garden! Among them are these: Lesson #1 - Never plant a whole row of lettuce! Lesson #2 - Two rows of carrots yields approx. 7,000 carrots and that is too many!
A special thanks to Jacob's mom, Karen, for driving to Idaho to teach us the ropes and help us with the canning! You're awesome!