My friend Wendy is a remarkable cook.  She makes all her own bread, and last weekend canned tomato sauce, sun dried tomatoes and strawberry jam. And she makes Limoncello – a bottle of which is sitting quietly in my refrigerator waiting for a night when I really need a treat. Very inspiring to say the least.  She documents some of the her recipes over here, on her cooking blog.

So I decided to do a bit of canning as well.  I started with Blackberry Liqueur using this recipe.  The blackberries grow over the fence from my neighbor’s yard.   They are a huge nuisance until blackberry season comes along and then I’m so grateful to have them so handy.  Right now I have 6 quarts of blackberry liqueur on my counter top – in two weeks I’ll press the fruit through a strainer, add 100-proof vodka and see what has happened.  I love it that the recipe also has other recipes for using up the yummy, but boozy, fruit mash.  mmmm, you can bet I’ll be making boozy turnovers.

Next I canned three partial quarts of tomato sauce.  I used this recipe and my kitchen still smells heavenly.  You can see that I left room at the top of the jars because rather than heat canning these I’m going to pop them in the freezer. Wendy and I were talking about it and neither of us really have the nerve to go there (you know, the whole botulism thing).  Next year.  So this is probably the most expensive tomato sauce ever, but now that I’ve figured it out, I think a few more quarts are in order.  And I’m thinking about peach butter… and and…