More Canning- 1st Jam Attempt, Homemade Laundry Soap, Rain's Coming!

More Canning Yesterday-
I use the recipes I posted a couple of days ago, and did the pickled dilly beans first-

It was nice yesterday morning as it rained really hard for at least 15 minutes the night before. I went to bed to the sound of pouring rain, what a nice sound.... I used the steam canner for the beans. I usedthe inversion method for the jam- cooked/boiled, then poured into hot jars, inverted for 5 minutes, and pinged a little later! I've read only to use this for jams/jellies. The jam was something new so I had to use the "sheeting test" for it. It took an extra 10 minutes more to "sheet", but it jelled!  I had a 1/2 pint leftover of the spiced version, so it went into the fridge and had some on toast this morning. It was good, so I'm happy! I was afraid I'd have peach syrup! Here's the peaches cooking down, with a blob of butter to prevent foaming-

I saw that my chokecherry bush I planted has a good crop ripening, so I'm going to try making some jelly from that soon...

Yesterday my canning total was-
4 qts. and 5 pints of dilly beans, 1/2 were "spicy"
1 qt. dilly carrots and beans- spicy
7 1/2 pints peach jam, with 1/2 of the jam "spiced" with a little vanilla and cinnamon.
I cut the sugar 1/3 in the recipe,a little too sweet IMO, but not bad for a first go at it.

Homemade Laundry Soap-
I made my first batch of Tinygardener's Laundry Soap recipe. Talk about easy, it took me 5minutes tops! I had read that Zote and Fels Naptha soaps have a lot of toxic chemicals. I liked this recipe because it used coconut-based Castile soap. The supplies were pretty cheap at the grocery store too, maybe $8.00. That price included 3 bars of soap, so it would make about 6 gallons of laundry soap, with some powders leftover. I cut the recipe in 1/2 since there's only two of us, and we use a front load washer, which uses less soap...

First I grated the castile soap-

Then I mixed some boiling water to the soap to "melt" it, then put cold water in a 1 gallon recycled vinegar jug. I then added the hot mix, added the borax and washing soda. Shake, shake, all done!

All done...

Rain's Coming!-

I think we're going to get some more rain soon! We get these late afternoon thunderstorms, but sometimes, no actual rain on the ground. I hate those storms, ick! I've learned to read the read fairly accurately after living here a while, and I can see these storms also "split" and miss us completely. They go left and right, and zippo down the middle to Boise. it's just the topography of the place. At least I did a bunch of front yard work a bit ago- weeding, pruning, dead heading and general clean up, since it was a bit cooler and windy. Then I got hot fast, as I didn't realize it was 90, so I came in. All done and it looks much better out there! And now it's getting cooler, rain's coming!