My weekend

This weekend I had my first solo canning session. I've helped my mom can countless times (probably ever summer from the time I could help until I got married, and then a few times after that as well!), but this was my first time actually doing it without help. Turns out, it's a bit more difficult to do the whole process alone. Who knew?! It could've been slightly complicated by the fact that I was attempting to juggle 3 boys as well (or 4, considering John was home). John helped me a little, but it still seemed like a LOT of work. Either way, my pantry now has some freshly canned green beans and peaches in it! I'm hoping to do some more green beans since the boys LOVE green beans, some tomatoes and salsa, and possibly some other kinds of beans - we'll see how ambitious I am.

My main motivation for canning started when I read that BPA leaches into canned tomatoes quite a bit due to the acidic nature of the tomatoes. Totally logical, but it never really occurred to me that there would be higher amounts of BPA in tomatoes than other canned items. We eat a TON of canned diced tomatoes as well as tomato sauces, etc. I buy spaghetti sauce in glass jars, but the other tomato products don't seem to be readily available in glass jars. So, I'm keeping my fingers crossed that my tomatoes hurry up and ripen before frost! We woke up to low 40's today (and a high of only 60 today!) and I'm concerned that our first frost might be right around the corner. Brrrrrrrrrrrrrr.