Taken captive by the canning bug!

Yes, this fall I really got into trying my hand at canning different things. It started with the peaches; I'd been at a friend's house while she was canning peaches and it looked simple enough that I decided to try it. After that I did 4 different kinds of jellies, some apples, and most recently pineapple! :-) I was shopping in Aldi, and found a good deal on pineapple. (99cents each) I bought a bunch! I mean like over 30 of them! Somewhere between 30 and 40 pineapple. Several were eaten fresh...there are still a few to be eaten fresh. Yum! A few were chunked up and put in the freezer. About 19 of them went into quart jars, and they were sooo pretty!!! See pictures below v

 Canned in a light syrup and water bathed for 20-25 minutes like the ball book says.

I wanted to share this blog post mostly to show what I did with the scraps and cores of the pineapple. I wanted to see if I could make pineapple juice from the scraps. So just like I would cook down apples, mash them, and strain out the juice, I tried the same thing for the pineapple. Since I had been also making apple butter, I had apple scraps too, (apple cores and peels) so I cooked down apple and pineapple together. When they were done cooking I mashed them with a potato masher and then went on to my straining. And this is what I took pictures of because its a great way to do this that I'm not sure many people are aware of. Use...get ready for this...panty hose! My sisters did this a couple years ago when they were making blueberry jelly. It works wonderfully if you don't have a super nice juicer. See pictures of the process >>> (oh! I just remembered that I have the pictures from when my sisters did this too! I might have to share!) 

After I'd cooked the pineapple and apple until soft, I put it in the food processor and liquified it. 

Then, taking knee high panty-hose, I stretched it over a pitcher where I was going to dump the liquified fruit.

The pitcher's purpose was mostly to hold open the panty-hose while I dumped in the fruit. I moved to a bowl in the sink where I had more room for squeezing.

 Works like a charm!

Okay, now onto sharing pictures of what my sisters did too :-)

 As I was looking back through the pictures, its just mind blowing the mass of blueberries they had that year! This was in 2009. I went picking this year and I tell you what, it was a really bad year for blueberries. I hadn't been since 2010, which was a good year.

They started with a pot full of blueberries, filled water just to the top of them and boiled them down until they were mush.

 Ooh, swirly!

I know....I know, I KNOW!!! How in the world did they ever have that much blueberries! I can't get over it. This year I had next to nothing in comparison :-P 

On to Juicing.... 

Pour the cooked down berries into a panty-hose knee high and squeeze!

 Its nice to have help when you're doing this.

 Blueberries will stain your hands!

Good grief! 

lol! :-)

 This year I learned that since blueberry is so strong, you can make it go really far by doing a ratio of 1 to 4 of blueberry juice to apple juice. Yay!!!

Well that's it, please do pin and share!