I'm not at all rational when it comes to growing, harvesting and preserving food.  I love to work in the garden, the warm soil, the magic when one bean seed turns into a bushel of beans over the season.  Then picking the beans, even when the day is so hot you have to stop and wipe the sweat out of your eyes.  I love the processing — stringing the beans, peeling the potatoes, slipping the skin off the tomatoes.  The canning! Saving every morsel of good food from the garden.  More jars! I never have enough jars unless I have a few extra dozen 'just in case' because they might sell out you know.  I got my root cellar redone with new shelves, and I feel so content when I look at the shelves of canned vegetables and fruit, and now I'm going to add canned stew, and chili, and stock from the beef we will soon put in the freezer.

But I really need to plan ahead how I will use what I preserve.  I've canned cases of beans, enough for the two of us to have them several times a week until next year's beans are on the vine, and still have more.   Fortunately my 'city' relatives think my canned beans and cinnamon pears and apple butter are priceless.  Of course they are, because you can't buy them at any price — but I can make a gift of them this Christmas so I can continue to indulge my love of food, and share the wealth.

I had a variety of peppers from the last couple of farmers' markets — one of the vendors has a beautiful crop of all kinds from bell peppers to the hotter varieties.  I prepped the peppers yesterdayand started out this morning canning the peppers in sauce.  I like the mild version (like Oliverios' mild) so I started out with bell peppers and some mildly hot banana peppers canned with tomato sauce and Italian spices.  After canning six quart jars of mild peppers I added hot hungarian banana peppers to the mix and canned six quarts of those.  Next I combined jalapenos and anchos, but instead of using Italian spices I added cumin and coriander to the pepper/sauce mixture.  (I decided that if I wanted peppers that hot I would probably prefer them in enchilada sauce instead of an Italian recipe.)  And finally I canned pints and half pints of jalapeno, habanero and serrano peppers in tomato sauce with no seasoning other than salt.  That way they can be used for anything from pizza or meat pie to enchiladas.  I plan to give those jars of peppers as gifts to my friends with asbestos palates!