Canning is not as fun anymore...

A friend of mine was kind enough to give me not only the Foley Food Mill that I needed, but also a bunch of peaches. So here's the tally:

4 pints of blackberry jam
9 pints of applesauce
14 half pints of apple butter
5 half pints of peach jam
13 quarts of peaches

Everything has gone so smoothly...

until yesterday, when I had the day from @$&% canning peaches. So there are 2 methods for canning peaches - hot pack or cold pack. I thought I would try cold pack because it seemed easier to me to just put the peaches in the jar and pour the boiling syrup over them. Wrong! I read that peaches have a lot of oxygen in them, and what happens when you pour boiling syrup over them? The oxygen comes OUT and they FLOAT! Bubbles + canning = BAD! I did everything I was supposed to - I put a knife down into the jar and tried to release trapped air bubbles, but there's only so much you can do when more bubbles keep forming. So I let those 3 jars that I "cold packed" sit and froth while I dumped the rest of the peaches into the syrup to cook for a few minutes after which they were "hot packed". I processed them all, and they all sealed properly, but it was obvious which 3 were cold packed - they are now sitting in my fridge waiting to be eaten while the other 10 are nicely labeled and shelved.

Oh, and the peach jam that I made didn't set the first time. I had to open all the bottles and let the jam just boil and reduce and then reprocess. It was not a good day.

I wish I could say I was done, but I still have a box of pears that are ripening, and 1 1/2 boxes of apples. The pears will be made into jam, and the fruit "hot packed". I am seriously considering making apple pie filling, because then I don't have to worry about the fruit floating!

I'm learning and I refuse to give up! I consider this a necessary skill. I just hope that in the process I don't poison my family! Stay tuned to this oh-so-riveting tale.

My first attempt at canning

I consider myself a pretty do-it-myself kind of person. I like to cook from scratch, I make a lot of my own cleaning supplies, I've even made my own soap. Canning is something that I have resisted for a long time. I helped my mom do a lot of canning as a child, so I was painfully aware of the work involved. I also think that it isn't really worth canning until I have a garden of my own, not to mention canning equipment of my own. Well I still don't have my own garden, but I have lots of friends who do and I am literally surrounded by orchards of apples, pears and peaches. So on Saturday I broke down and bought myself a steam canner, and used the blackberries that a friend gave me to make blackberry jam!

Aren't they beautiful? I am just so proud! Not only does the jam taste good, but the canning process actually worked - all of the jars sealed perfectly.

The sad thing is the very next day we attended a family gathering and brought fresh rolls and, you guessed it, jam. I almost shed a tear when I opened my hard work!

I've been bitten by the bug now though. I have a half bushel of gala apples that will be turned into applesauce and apple butter, and a half bushel of pears that will (hopefully) can and make into jam.

Here are some great canning links that I have found:

http://www.paulnoll.com/Oregon/Canning/

http://www.pickyourown.org//allaboutcanning.htm

Top 10 do's and don'ts for saving money on your household expenses

Many of the women at church expressed an interest in a group that would meet and discuss ways to save money on household expenses. We decided to call it Tightwads Anonymous! Here is something that I prepared for our first meeting:

Top 10 do's:

· Buy food storage basics (wheat, oats, sugar, oil, beans etc.) and learn how to use them.

o Cook beans ahead of time and freeze them for easy integration into your diet

o Make your own granola – easy and cheap to make, yummy to eat, expensive to buy

· Grow a garden

· Cook from scratch

· Reduce the amount of meat you eat

o When you do eat meat buy whole chickens when on sale for $.59/lb, roast and use for multiple meals. Don’t be afraid to buy roasts at less than $2.00/lb – cut them up into stew meat yourself, or roast and use leftovers for soup

· Pack a lunch – use leftovers

· Shop with a plan – list, menu etc

o Have a budget and stick to it, bring a calculator if you have to

· Shop around, shop sales

· Use coupons & rebates

· Buy generic

· Watch the register – and speak up if something rings up at the wrong price

Top 10 don’ts:

· Don’t buy baking mixes: Bisquick, pancake mix, brownie mix, cake mix – make your own

· Don’t buy plain yogurt or sour cream – easy to make your own yogurt, and plain yogurt can be used in the place of sour cream in many recipes

· Don’t buy soda – it's expensive and bad for you

· Don’t buy bread – easy to make

· Don’t buy bottled water

· Don’t buy junk food/convenience frozen foods

· Don’t assume that buying in bulk is cheaper – warehouse clubs are not always cheaper, and if buying large quantities means that some will be wasted, it’s not worth it

· Don’t buy school lunch – SO bad for the kids and it’s cheaper to send them with lunch

· Don’t make special trips to the store for just one or two items. It wastes gas and time

· Don’t spend a lot of money on cleaning supplies – most things in your home can be cleaned with vinegar & baking soda

Samara's new braces

Samara is definitely MY daughter. She looks like me, she acts like me, and most recently - she has my teeth. Poor girl! I suspected this so we made an appointment with the orthodontist a few weeks ago. She has all the same crowding and bite problems that I had (and had years of orthodontic work for, to no avail). The process started with having 4 baby teeth removed (just like I did), and was followed yesterday with an expander that will widen her top jaw (just like I did) AND braces - which I did not have, at least not at the same time as the expander. So hopefully this will actually work for her.

She was SO excited yesterday when she came out to show me that she had braces - complete with bands alternating shades of pink to match her shirt! Her friends all thought they were so cool, and when she got home from school she had to call Paul and tell him too.

Now that she has had them on for a day she is not quite so thrilled. She's pretty sore, poor thing, and the expander is a pain because food gets caught under it. Ah, the price of beauty...

And all this comes at quite a price. We have dental insurance, but it doesn't cover orthodontic work. And this is just phase one...

My annual day of celebration

The first day of school! Here are my 2nd and 4th grader - can you believe it? They're getting so old - sniff.

Daniel was ready to go too.

It was such an amazing day. Daniel actually played with his toys, he took a 3 hour nap this afternoon (which he hasn't done in, hmmm, about 3 months...) and didn't scream the entire time the girls were at school. It's not that I don't like it when they're here, it's just so peaceful when they're not!

Paper or Plastic - NEITHER!

I got an email recently from a friend of mine that included a link to a video montage about the evils of plastic bags. It was VERY effective. It was full of information that I guess I already knew, but that I needed to be reminded of. The thing that was most revealing to me was the fact that it costs more to recycle plastic bags than to produce a new one. I guess I had been under the false notion that I was saving the environment by dumping my excess plastic bags in those receptacles at the grocery store. The truth is, plastic bags are the bane of my existence. I hate the fact that when I go grocery shopping I end up coming home with SO many plastic bags that (I swear) reproduce under my kitchen sink. I don't think I need mention why plastic bags are so bad for the environment. I do think it is worth mentioning that plastic is made using petroleum products, and we need to reduce our dependency on petroleum.

So I started searching for some reusable shopping bags, and as it happens, they are becoming increasingly available and affordable - at least in my area. I spent $1 a bag, and I love them! They are much stronger than plastic bags, so you can fit more groceries into one bag. It's easier to carry the groceries into the house, I no longer have plastic bags jumping out at me when I open the cupboard under the sink, and cashiers have been surprisingly cooperative about using them. I highly recommend them.

The Hannah Montana party

Samara and Lindsey's combined birthday party is tomorrow, so I am up to my eyeballs in Hannah Montana paraphernalia - heaven help me. Although I am certainly NO fan of Hannah Montana, I am pretty proud of the invitation.