It's like Christmas around here. Today, I used my pressure canner that I got for Christmas for the first time!

When you're hoping your garden will provide as much of your family's diet as possible, tough choices are involved. This is our first harvested mess of green beans. We won't be eating them fresh, though.

We currently have zucchini coming out of our ears (keep checking back for more zucchini recipes). And, (other than freezing a few shredded cups for future zucchini bread), we tend to eat our zucchini in ways that rely on fresh-picked zucchini. I've blanched zucchini and squash in the past, and it just sat in the freezer until I eventually threw it out because we just don't eat our squash that way.

So, zucchini now. Green beans later. We may eventually eat some fresh green beans, but since we tend to use our green beans as a replacement for grocery-store canned beans, most of our green beans will find their way to the mason jars and feed us this winter when garden-fresh zucchini is a thing of the past.

The instruction booklet was a little overwhelming, but once I'd read it through, actual operation was pretty easy.

Food for later!