Food Storage Goodness

This year I finally tackled building up our food storage. We don't have a mega awesome garden (yet), but we have some local farmers we get by with. We were able to visit a local raspberry patch for family night, and the summer sun setting-along with good times-turned out to be an amazing evening. 

I didn't get to bottle my ripe tomatoes because I was sick, by I did finish 49 quarts of peaches and pears. Not bad for a first try without my mom right near me :)

With our raspberries, and plums from ourneighbor's  trees, we made some raspberry-plum fruit leather. It was so yummy. You wash and cut the plums in half, cook for 15 minutes, then blend with the raspberries and a little sugar. I don't have a fruit dehydrator, so we just set the oven at a super low temp and cooked it for 10 hours. It was supposed to last a couple months, but was gone in a couple weeks!

One thing I've found is that there is almost always an abundance of zucchini during the summer form neighbor and friend gardens. We were given so much zucchini and will use every bit. Julian sat and shredded cups of zucchini, which we'll use in the winter for chocolate zucchini bread. Next year I hope to be more zealous and get tomatoes and jam made. Yum!