It takes how long?

For the beginning canner, the issue of time becomes the major stumbling block. Who wants to spend an entire afternoon, or depending on the amount of produce, the entire day in a hot kitchen? After picking, washing and sorting the produce you already need a nap! You pick, wash, pit and cook the cherries - and then process them? You have got to be kidding!

Yes, canning can be laborious - but you know it's worthwhile. The best tomato juice, the best relish, the best pickles, and the best salsa - it can all come right from your very own kitchen. So how do you make it less time consuming?

Here are a few pieces of equipment to help.

Don't despair when you have lots of garden cabbage ready to pick at once. Try our large wooden slicer that cabbage shreds quickly - perfect for homemade coleslaw or processing sauerkraut. Simply place the cabbage in the wooden frame and slide it up and down while applying pressure to the cabbage, and shred into approximately 1 mm strips. You can fit a small cabbage head in the 7” square wooden frame. Lots more sauerkraut for you to make!

Are you in the middle of cherry season and making cherry pie filling or preserving cherries? Tired of coring the cherries with a hand-held cherry pitter? You can pit up to 30 lbs. of cherries in an hour with a cherry plunger. This plunger automatically feeds the cherry into slot and with one stroke of the plunger the pit ejects into a container and cherry falls into waiting bowl.

The cherry stoner processes even larger batches and is the perfect tool for those with cherry trees. This cherry stoner is faster at removing pits than the plunger-type pitters. Just feed the cherries into the hopper and turn crank. Heavy-duty stoner squeezes cherries to remove stones. The stones are ejected into separate receptacle and the cherry meat falls into bowl, ready to create preserves or fillings. Wow! This is a real time saver!

Shelling peas. This was always the task assigned to the kids while I was growing up. Sitting on the porch and opening the pods and emptying the little round green peas into a bowl. This is time consuming and I no longer have children at home to help me out! A pea sheller can shell a bushel of peas in 30 minutes! You can either hand crank or use an electric drill for faster shelling!

A food strainer is a tomato lover's dream. Feed the tomatoes into the hopper, turn the crank and let the seeds and skins go one way and the wonderful juice and pulp the other way. Now you can create sauce, chili sauce, or red-hot fiery salsa! Great way to save time and prepare bushels of tomatoes! But there are some added benefits; the Food Strainer also can be used for berries, pumpkins and grapes by simply changing a screen and for less effort, you can purchase a motor to run it! Try this time saver this year!

Maybe you are not into tomatoes but sweet corn? One of my least favorite jobs is cutting the kernels off the ears of corn! I always make my husband take on this task. This year I'm going to use the American corn cutter that hooks over my pan. I can just slide the ear along the tray and the blade will cut off the kernels with no hassle. I can't wait for this year's corn crop!

An apple peeler and corer will reduce prep time for making pies, applesauce and more! Peel, core and slice apples in one step, or choose to peel only, or core and slice only. Now you can really handle those bushels in the fall!

For those who don't like to spend all day surrounded by hot steam and boiling water the answer is a steam canner! It really takes the "sweat" out of canning. Use only 3 pints of water and cut your pre-heating time in half. The steam canner takes the place of a large water bath canner, so use only with high acid foods. But for fruit and pickles - you can do small batches in a short amount of time and cut out the heavy lifting and boiling over! The steam is what cooks the produce! This piece of equipment ranks high on saving time!

So this year get out of the kitchen faster! With some unique products you won't work up such a sweat, but you will still get to enjoy all the great tasting food!

Here’s a couple of quick recipes for this summer:

Quick Mustard Pickles

Zucchini Relish