Get Ellie Topp and Margaret Howard's book "Small Batch Preserving". If you just can for yourself, only make what suits you, but try a bit of something different using their book. Many people find that 7 jars of, say, strawberry jam of a recipe is just too many in their pantry.

I have a business and make 2,500 jars of a variety of 64 different jams and pickles every year, so I only do big batches by what is in season. But, even before I started that my standard gift giving was of jars of jam or pickles. Everyone likes food and handmade is rare these days. Most of my under 35 yr old customers have never tasted jam without corn syrup, artificial flavors and colors. Their parents didn't can and only a few grandparents canned anything. So, if you like to can but don't need your 4 jars of blackberry jam, give them away to a teacher, doctors, nurses, pastors, mail person, wait staff, the local news carrier, and even teenage neighbors. Guaranteed, it will make them smile.

Nancy

I guess I'm too old and set in my big batch ways. Wife is too since we both grew up doing it that way and have continued the practice now for many decades. Part of that comes from our focus on canning foods in basic forms rather than dealing with the complexity of canning them in some sort of finished 'fancy form'. We eat plain so we can plain. :)

So very few of the niche recipes hold much appeal for us. She gets a little fancy with some of her jams sometimes but we still prefer the basic jams most. I get a little small-batch fancy with a few meats now and then but that is mostly in the form of seasonings.

Otherwise, with the exception of big batches of BBB Stewed Tomatoes and Annie's Salsa, most all the garden produce - tomatoes, corn, potatoes, squash, spinach, collards, and beans are canned plain. Peppers, onions, and okra are either frozen or dehydrated, and beets and cukes get pickled.

Dave

I remember helping my mother put up quarts and quarts of dill pickles or peaches or pears in all day marathons, but I rarely can that way myself. I'll typically can maybe 8 quarts of dill pickles in a year, 1 or 2 quarts at a time. Why? Well, I don't NEED 30 quarts of dill pickles, and I have only a small patch of pickling cukes in my garden which typically yield enough for a quart of pickles every day or so. So, I come home from work and make a quart of dills. A typical recipe for jam yields 5-6 half pints, so that's what I make unless I have a real plethora of some fruit or another and it makes a jam people particularly like, in which case I'll make 2 batches. The most I ever do at any one time any more is probably bread and butter pickles - I'll make 9-15 pints of those at a time. I also freeze fruit in quart bags for pies and other baking during the year, and pretty much only freeze tomato puree anymore. I use the puree more than I ever used canned tomatoes, it's easier to do (the pressure cooker is a pain in the arse IMO), and ultimately it takes up less storage space. I do more canning and preserving when I do small batches of things, because I can do a bit of this or that when I get home from work, rather than taking on a marathon in the kitchen.