Yes we can!

For beginning canners (which is probably anyone under the age of 70), You Can Can is a great book to learn about how to can vegetables, fruit, etc. And let's face it, it's a fun title to say. Canning can seem intimidating, but when you spend a lot of time tending your vegetable garden, you want to make the vegetable last longer than a week. While you can freeze much of your produce, it's usually recommend to use frozen produce within six months.

So far we've just canned tomatoes and pickled vegetables -- cucumbers, okra, jalapenos. Hubby loves to snack on pickled okra and jalapenos, so that's his canning of choice.

There are two basic ways to can -- if the items have high acidity, you just need a big pot (we use a turkey fryer). If it's not acidic, like peaches, you have to have a pressure cooker (this is why so far we've stuck to high acidic vegetables). Actually, we did buy a pressure cooker this winter; while it's not big, we could try to can the non-acidic produce, but so far all haven't grown anything we wanted to pressure cook can.

The great thing about You Can Can is that it takes away a lot of the intimidation and you'll soon find out you CAN can.