For 27 years I had an enormous garden and during the summer and fall I always focused on making dishes that used as much of the fresh produce that the garden produces as possible.
Because we spent up to a month at a time in our Casita trailer I put together a little cookbook of two pot meals since she only has a two burner stove. The pdf is all set up for you to print out as a little booklet. Now of course we live full-time in our Airstream and since I actually have an oven (and 3 burners) I've made myself a bigger cookbook!
I also used to can. I got a major hankering to try canning the summer of 1982 and I started out canning plums for Walter. Then I learned to make Dilly Beans while we were in Community in Massachusetts.
By the time we were living in Oregon I'd graduated to making dill pickles too. And when I finally had a garden of my own I started making jam, more pickles, canned fruit and my own tomato and enchilada sauces.
In later years, I only canned fruit and occasionally made fresh pickles for friends or neighbors. We had a small orchard on our property which produced about 150-200 pounds of apples every year so I made lots of apple sauce and dried apples.
There is a special pleasure having one's shelves full of beautiful jars of canned fruit at the end of the canning season.
These shelves were in a storage area in our basement that we jokingly called "Heaven" after the St. Francis quote: "Store your treasures in heaven."