Home canning!

I've grown my own cucumbers and turned them into pickles for years now. It's a very satisfactory experience, or "Putting up food when it's at its freshest is like sealing the best parts of summer inside a jar." That's a quote I found on the Globe Life website.

So far I've put up ten pints, both wide-mouth and regular, of pickles.

The other thing I've done this summer is put up four and one-half gallons of blackberries into quart and pint packages. What I do with these is make blackberry cobbler, my favorite dessert. Because I took the time to drive down to DeSoto Parish and pick blackberries for two hours at a time in the hot, blazing sun, I simply froze them. Later  I will make blackberry preserves, cobbler all winter, or just grab a bag of ones I added sugar to and eat from the bag. That is such a refreshing experience!

The bag to the left has sweetened berries (that make their own juice).