[LotuSeed]

What have you "put up" from this year's (or years past) growing season? Include pics if you can, pun intended lol.
What has been your favorite? Your least favorite? How do you use your preserved items? How do you organize and store them? Anyone care to share?

[Mrs Bee]

Most of the produce from the allotment this year is sitting in my 3 freezers.

I haven't bothered to do any more pickled peaches or pears this year as I still have several jars from last year.

I haven't even made much jam for the house as we are eating our way through the left over jams and marmalade from the business that didn't fill  a full jar.

I have made about 20 jars of piccalilli and I have jars of pickled gherkins and bread and butter pickle all over the house. At one point I was running out of places to put them.

I have done lots of preserves for winter festival presents. Loads of onion chutney, Damson and port and lemon jam, apple and cider chutney, chilli jam, orange, cinnamon, whisky and chocolate marmalade, spiced tomato and chilli  chutney.

Chutneys and pickles are used with toasted sandwiches for lunch, pickled peaches and pears with cheese.
I better stop as I could just go on and on.

Oh yes, bottled brandy peaches in trifles.

[Mrs Bee]

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[Mrs Bee]

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That's better that worked. I have bottles like this all over the house and am fast running out of space.

[LotuSeed]

That's quite an extensive lot Mrs. Bee. Do you do all of it by yourself?

Here's some of what I've done this far
Applesauce, plain and peach
Tomato sauce
Pizza sauce
Salsa
Salsa Verde
French beans
Sweet corn
Potatoes
Strawberry jam
Red gooseberry jam
Raspberry jam
Cherry jam
Blackberry jam (notice a pattern? lol)
I still have strawberries, gold, red and black raspberries, blueberries, peaches, tomatoes and tomatillos in the freezer.

[LotuSeed]

Cherry, strawberry, red gooseberry and peaches...

[LotuSeed]

Sweetcorn, blackberry syrup, two of my shelving units. Not pictures is an old china cabinet full of more jams. There are also now boxes of filled jars on the floor! Plenty more space to use, but I need to build shelving units that can hold the immense weight and anchor them to the wall.  The thing I can't get over is the amount of jars I've gone through and I still need more  LOL

[snowdrops]

Sweetcorn, blackberry syrup, two of my shelving units. Not pictures is an old china cabinet full of more jams. There are also now boxes of filled jars on the floor! Plenty more space to use, but I need to build shelving units that can hold the immense weight and anchor them to the wall.  The thing I can't get over is the amount of jars I've gone through and I still need more  LOL

Will you eat all of that before you harvest next years crops?

[LotuSeed]

We will certainly try . The potatoes are disappearing from the shelves quickly so those will probably be gone before then. I'll inevitably use a bunch up as the holidays get closer. Some of the jams will be given as gifts. I'll keep things longer than a year though, so if it doesn't all get eaten, I'll carry it over to next year and just make sure that it stays at the front if the rotation.

[snowdrops]

It seems an awful lot of work even if  you enjoy it. Would some of the produce not store fresh in your cellar?

[LotuSeed]

The onions and garlic are fairing well down there. The potatoes might have had I not bottled them, but it's much more convenient to be able to just pop open a jar and heat them up. I tried storing apples, wrapped in newspaper, but that didn't work out too well. Might have had more to do with the varieties than the cellar environment. There's an unknown variety of squash and a few small pumpkins that are keeping well, but I hate squash and pumpkins so they're really just for decorative purposes. 
And yes it is a ton of work. From picking to processing I do it all myself. Although this year my husband helped when I got the potatoes and picked 13 pounds of blueberries

[tosca100]

Masses of tomatoes, plum, chunks of beefsteak, cherry, pickled cherry, sauce, lutinitsa (toms, aubergine and peppers) peaches, pears, plums. Pickled onion, cucumbers and beets. The neighbour has given me pickled peppers and mixed veg, huge jars we will probably never use. and beans which we will definitely not use.

I make masses of chutney and jam from whatever is needing using, but most is sold at car boot sales. We have had some honey this year but as it was the first year of having bees it didn't last long.

The freezer is bursting with what I didn't bottle, but I think a lot of that will end up in the chickens, I grew far too much of things that don't freeze well, like green beans and courgettes.

Most of the bottles are in the cellar and I don't want to go down there at this moment to take a pic, but will try later though the shelves are shrouded in curtain to keep the light out.

And we have about twenty butternut squash, they grew like weeds and no visitor is allowed to leave without some, we have given away about thirty! Some for pigs.

[Mrs Bee]

Hi Lotus. Yep I do it. all myself. I have several hundreds jars in the selling cupboard.

And lots in the cupboard for us and for presents.

I just like trying out lots of different recipes and techniques. Well into hot and cold smoking at the moment.

I start off the seeds and Mr Bee tends the allotment. We don't garden well together,  so I stick to the back garden and processing and cooking the produce, and send him off to the allotment.

Do you have a large piece of land? You have sooo much produce there.

Really impressed with the canning. It is not something we tend to go for over here.

[sunshineband]

This year I have cooked up and bottled a whole range of 'cook-in' curry and herb sauces -- balti style, dopiazza, hot and sour etc, using our own tomatoes, chillies, onions, garlic and herbs. I did some last year and it was a great time saver as well as making good use of produce I had no freezer space for, so this year I grew more tomatoes to use for these , and jolly good they are too    So far I have donee28 jars but we have been eating them and I need to do another couple of batches with the remains of the tomatoes in the outside fridge while they are still useable 

I have also done red chilli jelly and green chilli & coriander leaf jelly, pickled shallots (red cabbage to come next week), grape & rosemary jelly, apple & mint jelly, picallili, jostaberry jam, blackberry & apple jam, raspberry jam, bramble jelly, raspberry jelly and blackcurrant jelly: onion marmalade to come. I also have quite a lot of dried produce this year: apple rings, pear slices, peppered courgette crisps, banana slices (not home grown ) and plenty of dried beans in jars.

Some of these will be in the seasonal baskets and gifts for friends, some to feed family and the rest for us. Amazingly, I shall have little left by the time preserving season comes around again 

Here is the red chilli jelly. This has been so popular I shall make some more next week, plus some chilli & tomato chutney. I also do Winter chutney every year, but this is made with bought in dried fruit.

[Mrs Bee]

that chilli jelly looks gorgeous, Sunny.