Bliss, when you're canning, preserving, drying all these things, do you have a target amount of how much you need ( or want)?
I'm not good with inventory on dried goods yet. I just know I run out of dried fruit we eat as snacks, so I keep dehydrating apples, bananas, pineapples (when they are on sale).
60-80 qts of tomato sauce/year. We've had bad tomato years, so we keep another set in case we have a bad tomato year. It all kind of equals out over the years and they are labeled by year. We use the oldest first, and the newest stuff goes in the back, the oldest stuff in the front.
We like to have at least 50 qts of apple sauce and pear sauce combined per year, and more for the next year. (Because we never know if we'll have a good apple or pear year.) I use it in baking to replace oil, plus we eat it by the bowl.
30-40 pints of sweet sour pickles. 10 pints of dill pickle slices for hamburgers. 20 qts of corn, and 20 of green beans. Whatever soups we think of, up to 30 qts. Ketchup we make a couple cases of pints at a time, anytime of year. Mustard I make a case at a time. Salsa, we'll aim for 3 cases (36 pints).
There isn't a limit on fruit puree/jam. It just depends on what fruit we can get, usually on reduced prices, or sale prices. So we probably have 60-80 1-cup jars of those in all different flavors spanning 4 years. I still have brown sauce and mild hot sauce from previous years so I'm not planning on canning any right now. Canned pineapple, a few cases, in January usually if they go on sale for $1/each fresh.
edit to add: I forgot, we canned mushrooms in 8 oz jars, 4 cases of them or more, when aldi's ran a sale on mushrooms last year. We can never have enough mushrooms.
A little over a pound of peppers, and 12 oz each of onions and carrots, ready to salt them, before cooking. by pepperhead212, on Flickr
Vegetables added to the onions, after cooking those with the blended seasonings. by pepperhead212, on Flickr
4 pints of escabeche, after a 15 minute water bath. by pepperhead212, on Flickr
