Canning Lesson #1

Make sure you have enough fruit pectin for making canned peach jam.  Not doing this will make you stop what you are doing and run to the store so you can finish the jam.

I Think I Can, I Think I Can

I just did a produce swap with my in-laws.  It was awesome.  I gave them all the picked tomatoes (there are a lot more still in the garden), a few potatoes and 8 or so peppers.  In return I got 2 more small boxes of peaches to add to the 3 boxes they gave us last night.  Now instead of tomatoes coming out of our ears, we have peaches!  I'm going to can the nicer-looking ones and jam and dehydrate the not-so-cute ones.  I think I'll be busy for a few days with these.  More work, but at least they're not tomatoes!!

Not So Bad After All

http://healthyfamilycookin.blogspot.com/2011/09/when-canning-just-isnt-worth-it.html

You know, I don't feel bad about my spaghetti-sauce-in-the-freezer mishap anymore.



Random

 Right now I am eating my lunch:  leftover pasta bake, a hard-boiled egg, a whole tomato, an apple and a glass of milk.  Yummy.

I just came in from weeding.  I weeded for 2 hours and 40 minutes today and finished up what I couldn't yesterday.  I weeded for 3 hours yesterday.  That tells how bad the weeds were.

The salsa I made and canned on Friday is very tasty.

I like to eat alone.

Stacking firewood is fun.

The sound of airplanes droning is a sleepy sound.

Weeding is satisfying.  Especially those morning glories.

I had at least 4 weird dreams last night and remembered them enough to tell my husband about them this morning.

I like being here by myself.

We have a lot of tomatoes.

I found a dead mouse while weeding.  Gross.

I just finished reading Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens.  I recommend it.

My pasta is getting cold.  I'd better finish it.



Busted

You know those 6 quarts of pasta sauce I made last week?  Well, I don't know if I filled the jars too full or the jars weren't freezable, but every one of them cracked in the freezer.  Rather than try to save the sauce and take a chance of glass shards being in the sauce, we just tossed the whole lot.  Luckily for me, our garden is still producing tomatoes at a too-rapid rate, so I'll get another chance to make sauce this week.  This time I'll can it or use plastic freezer containers.  Lesson learned.

Alone Time

I realized I haven't posted how having all the kids in school is going.  As my husband likes to say, it's delicious, delightful and delovely.

In other words,

AWESOME!!!



Down to Two

Yesterday I was able to use more than 100 tomatoes to make spaghetti sauce, so we are down to 2 giant bowls of tomatoes instead of 4.  We're making progress.  After having pasta and sauce for dinner, we were left with 6 quarts of sauce to freeze.  It was a most-of-the-day process and made quite the mess, but was worth it to use so many tomatoes.  Next up, salsa.

Now, what to do with all those summer squash!