What I learned….

Went to a series of classes 1.5 hours long over the last 2 months at the Waupaca County Extension office and really… I had a great time and learned lots!  Certainly worth the 5 afternoons I spent driving there (20-25 minutes one way – as easy as getting to Appleton).
Much of what I learned is what I do NOT want to do so I’ll start with that.

• I don’t want to do canning…  water canning OR pressure canning.  Just don’t – thought I did but no.  Have taken my water canner back to Wal-Mart.  I’m sold on the jars however!
• I don’t want to do pickling – no interest…. don’t really like the stuff. 
• I don’t want to do freezing – what if the electric goes off then you lose everything…. and lord knows around here the electric goes off.

Pretty general but glad I discovered those things right now.  I may change my mind later but for now, that’s it!
Now…  what I do want to do:

• I do want to make jam…  when I get berries from what I’ve planted….   grapes, blueberries, strawberries, blackberries, raspberries…  yum!  No this year however.
• And I’m still sold on dehydrating and have been for a year now.  So far: peppers, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, leftover chili, apples and pears.  On the horizon – everything I just listed plus: oatmeal (cook then dehydrate so it can be used right away on cold cereal and rehydrated in milk); broccoli (think broccoli cheese soup); salsa, beans (same concept as oatmeal); peaches, bananas, and other fruit: carrots, pumpkin and maybe some herbs such as mint and now I learned to make “leathers” (fruit leathers as a treat and vegetable leathers (tomato sauce leathers for pizza)!

I bought some books (well worth the money) and each class had specific handouts for that class so I have lots of good reference materials.   The classes were $5 each and with each one except the dehydrating class we got 2-3 jars of whatever we did.  In the dehydrating class we had a great piece of pizza that was made with tomato sauce leather!  Good stuff!