Canning Disasters

Being Fall and all, and being that apples and peaches were only 88 cents a pound, I did the only natural thing and made up large quantities of pie filling. 

Day1. I completely fail to make sure that I had all the ingredients required before peeling, coring and slicing 2 dozen apples.  I didn't have the car so I ended up juicing about 6 of those apples that took so long to prepare all for a measly 2 cups of apple juice and I ended up having to go to the store that evening to stock up for day 2. 

I should note that we have VERY hard water here and so I have to use several gallons of distilled water  for the water bath. I should also note that I failed to get more water....

Day 2. Lots of apple pie filling. It's going well. I prep all the peaches and pour the rest of my water into the canner (preparing peaches takes forever by the way). I put the last couple of apple jars in the canner and, POP! Jar breaks. Apple pie filling EVERYWHERE. The last of my precious water is totally contaminated. I have 7 quarts of peaches just sitting there waiting to be turned into pie filling. I have a pot of sugar and clearjel just waiting for the peaches. Oh, and I don't have the car. While dealing with all that I had left my huge food storage bucket of sugar open and the 4 year old decided to taste it...which, incidentally resulted in sugar all over the floor.

I ended up waiting for Paul to come home (which resulted in browner, mushier peaches than I would have liked, even with drenching them in lemon juice) and spent the entire evening canning up peach pie filling.  I can't say that I'm eager to do any more canning for awhile. In any case, I've got a bunch of delicious pie filling going on in my cupboard.