Preserving plans need to be formulated

The first strawberries appeared at the market yesterday. Still very pale but sweet enough, just about, to be eaten without needing sugar. Lovely flavour to them. And today I took my last portion of tomatoes, courgettes and onions out of the freezer to use. Last week, it was my last jar of tomatoes. I did very little in the way of preserving last year and am going to have to put a lot of work into it this year. I've already bought a large tin of tomatoes to use next week, since I know I have none of my own. And I've used the occasional tin over the course of the year, too. But it's just never the same as my own bottled ones. I don't think I'd ever use just a tin of tomatoes as a pasta sauce - I'd have to make sure to add loads of herbs and probably onion and garlic as well, just to make it tasty. Not so with the fresh and/or self-processed ones (I do often add herbs, etc. to those, too but they can stand alone).

I think rather than trying to do a couple of huge canning sessions, I'm going to aim for doing just one batch every week. My water bath canner fits seven jars at a time. If I want to have one jar to use every week, on average, then I'll need to do one batch every week for eight weeks. And I think I'll try to resist the temptation to make lots of other stuff, or try new things this year. That's enough. Well, maybe one batch of raspberry jam. And some dried strawberries. But that's all.