On a Preservation Roll a Whole Month Earlier than Last Year.

It must be time to store up the nuts for the winter because I have got a serious hankering to do some food preservation...

Tuesday morning I walked 5 miles in Bingham Canyon with my friends Shelly, Sherry, and Heather. I should have known that was enough time on my feet, but I'd gotten myself all psyched to bottle peaches during the previous week. I bought a 28 pound box for $20 at the West Jordan farmer's market. I think this was a little high, but my other choice was $28 for 32 pounds. You do the math.

I only ate a couple of peaches in the prep process and found out from Jon that the boys had been grabbing them out of the garage while I'd left them out there to ripen. Well, I only got 13 quarts - not nearly enough to last my guys until next year, so after I was finished, I dashed back to the farmer's market (it's only there on Tuesday's from 3-7) and bought another box. Like I can psyche myself up for that again...

We had some with grilled cheese tonight for dinner (the boys are all about dipping the sandwiches in the juice), and all of them told me the peaches were too sweet. Dang. My FIL's peaches are always a little bit tart (sorry Dad), so I figured I'd use a light syrup (4 cups water/2 cups sugar according to my beloved JOY OF COOKING). Problem is that these peaches were so sweet anyway that even the light syrup is just || this much over the top.

Oh well. I've got another whole box to do. I'll taste those peaches first and adjust the syrup accordingly. I suppose I could make some peach jam like my lovely cousin, Miranda...

I just don't think I have enough freezer space for more jam. I did lots of batches of berry jams this year - 2 raspberry, 2 boysenberry, 1 blackberry, and 3 mixed berry using the leftovers and a bag of frozen berries from Costco. See last year's jam post in re JAM POOP and diverticulitis. Note that the date of that post was Oct 21 - I've still got a month to go...

The blackberry batch set so quickly and firmly that I almost couldn't get it into the jars. I had one batch of raspberry and one batch of boysenberry that didn't set. I called my mom (which seems to be the common trait in canning stories - having to call a relative) and asked her what I should do. She told me that my grandma would call the 1-800 number on the package.

So, after going back to the store to get more pectin (had to use Sure Jell [ok it was actually the store brand of Sure-Jell - "Can-Jell" $1.35/package to Sure-Jell's $2.63/package] because my local Smith's doesn't carry MCP) and some nifty freezer containers (have you seen these things? The 1 cup variety have a purple lid, and they are threaded on the inside of the jar so that you can easily stack the jars with a type of locking action - very swift). Where was I?

Oh yes. I got more pectin and more containers and called Sure-Jell. They told me that I needed to do a test jar - prepare the pectin, add 2 Tbsp sugar, and 1 Tbsp pectin to the jam, let it sit for another 24 hours, and then do the rest of the batch if that worked. Hah! If I'm going to go through all of that, why would I only do one jar - why not just do the entire batch? So, I dumped the raspberry jam into one bowl, and the boysenberry into another. I washed all of the containers, prepped the pectin (in 2 separate pans - 1 for each batch). Added 1 cup of sugar (that's 2 Tbsp per cup of jam, 8 cups of jam per batch, so 16 Tbsp or 1 cup - did the math for you that time 8^)) and added the pectin. The sugar dissolved beautifully, and I figured that we were on our way to set jam.

The raspberry set just fine. The boysenberry did not. At this point, I was not going to add more sugar to that fruit, so it looks like I ended up with a batch of boysenberry syrup.

I gave a jar of each to Mindy, Griff's daycare lady, and she gave me a bottle of peach-raspberry. She didn't even use pectin in hers. She had a recipe that used unflavored gelatin! What part of Idaho did she come from???

So - now I'm sitting here nursing the blisters on the back of my feet from Tuesday's walk, finally able to walk up and down the stairs without my hips screaming in agony, feeling the pressure of that other box of peaches, and mysteriously still wanting to do applesauce.

I found a source for macintosh apples in Logan, and I get to call on Monday to find out when they're ready.... Oh the anticipation.

Now if I could only figure out my Grandma Egan's chili recipe and bottle up some of that. But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Yick - One of the Things That Happen Just Because I'm the Lone Female...

Jon took Carson and Evan dove hunting on Monday. He's always told me that if it rains really hard the day before the opener, then the opener isn't any good. So - why would he think it was hunky-dory to take my guys out at 4:00 in the morning after the downpour we had Sunday night? I don't get it - they are so excited that they can't hardly go to sleep the night before, Jon wakes up at 3 freaking thirty to make porridge (aka oatmeal or germade) and toast so that they can have full stomachs. They gladly get up to eat (I honestly heard nothing out of Evan when their alarm go off - this is not normal!), and they load up. Whatever.

They left, drove down to Delta, got 1 bird, and came home.

They'd taken Hilo (our 3 yr old chocolate lab) with them for his 1st hunt and left Kona (our 11 yr old black lab) home. They decided that Kona would like to pretend she'd gone hunting, so they wanted to keep the dove to throw around for Kona to retrieve in the back yard. She's old enough that this is about all she can handle - so it's all good. I didn't ever think to ask where they were keeping the bird.

So, last night I went out to the garage fridge to get a Diet Coke. At this point you're probably wondering whether you really want to keep reading, huh? Eh - go ahead. I dare ya.

There were two cases in there, so I just reached into the one that was sitting at an angle looking like it only had 1 or 2 cans in the bottom. Did I look in the tilted case? NO! Why would I do that? When they're in there like that, they're either empty or they have a couple cans. PROBLEM - it didn't have any cans, just a DEAD DOVE. Griff just stood there and laughed at me shrieking. He rattled off something about how everyone knew that was the box with the bird. I couldn't really hear him cause I had the skeevies so bad. Cured me of my Diet Coke habit for an evening.

Come to think of it, today I've only had one out of the inside fridge - that's where I keep my bottles...

There Goes My Baby...

Griff's preschool is 3 days/week from 12:30 - 3:00. He's going to a place down the street from daycare - and it's during daycare hours, so it shouldn't have even been a big deal. He was just so excited and seemed so grown up!

Last night he told me he had to stay in his own bed ALL NIGHT LONG because he's a big kid. He did it! I suppose we'll have to see how long that will last.

He woke up around 7:45 this morning, put on his clothes, brushed his teeth, asked for a bowl of cereal, ate it ALL (because you have to have a good breakfast to go to school), and then went to find a comb and gel for his hair. He got out his backpack, grabbed a sweatshirt, and went and stood in the driveway until Jon was ready to leave for work.

I got to wave goodbye from the garage while they drove down the street. As I walked in the house and thought about being all by myself (which has happened almost every day since Cars & Ev started school 2 weeks ago) I just started to cry.

It's all good though. Jon came home from work around 1:30. I got to spend the afternoon talking to him with no boys around!

I had the windows open all day, got my IKEA Klover lamp hung in my office, did 2 conference calls and some other work stuff, got most of my office organized, went grocery shopping, and took Griff to the library.

It really has been a good day. I think I'll go finish up dinner and snuggle G on the couch while we watch Ben 10 or something.