Potatoes & Jelly

I certainly woke up on the wrong side of the bed today.  Since I couldn't seem to accomplish much else, I decided to put my frustration to work in the kitchen.  I love to cook, bake, experiment, can, and taste test!  I spend the majority of my day doing something in the kitchen.  I don't even mind standing over a sink full of soapy water washing dishes!  And I love the look of a clean sparkly kitchen after a long days work of canning! 
My frustrations from the morning had rubbed off on my kids and they were arguing and being wild so I put them to work in the kitchen as well. We started out peeling tons and tons of potatoes.  Then we washed them and cut them up.  We left some in large pieces to can in quarts and diced some into smaller pieces for the pint jars.  Next, we boiled them for about 10 minutes and packed them in clean mason jars.  The first batch went into the pressure cooker around noon.  While we were peeling & chopping we also cut up some potatoes for french fries for lunch.  After the first batch was canning, we took a break to have ham and french fries for lunch.  After we had all the potatoes I wanted ready to can, the kids went outside to play.  I put the second batch in the pressure cooker around 2pm and started making jelly with the elderberry juice my friend had given me.  Jelly is easy once the fruit juice is prepared and since she had done the hard work for me, the elderberry jelly only took about 15 minutes to complete. 
Since I had one pouch of Sure-Gel left I decided to make some mint jelly too.  I sent the kids out to pick some mint leaves out of the garden.  Here is the recipe I used for mint jelly:  

• 1 1/2 cups mint leaves pressed down
• 2 1/4 cup water

Wash & finely chop the mint leaves.  Add them to the water and bring to a boil.  Remove from heat & cover for 10 minutes.  Strain.

• 3 cups sugar
• 2 Tbsp lemon juice
• 1 pouch Sure-Gel gel

Stir together strained mint juice, sugar, and lemon juice.  Bring to full rolling boil over high heat, stirring constantly.  Add Sure-Gel.  Stir while bring back to full boil.  Boil for 1 minute and pour into prepared jars.  I simply cap the jars, but you can water bath them for 5 minutes if desired.  Water bathing seems to cause my jelly not to set up so I don't do that step.

So, even though my day started out horribly, I now have 14 quarts & 8 pints of potatoes, 2 pints & 3 half-pints of elderberry jelly, and 2 pints of mint jelly!!   And a clean kitchen!!!