A Month of Canning

August apparently is a month of canning. Mr. N grew a beautiful garden this year and my mom has one of her own too, so we have lots of produce in our house. Not wanting it all to go bad, we've been freezing stuff, making jam, and canning. It's a lot of work, really messy, and it really stinks at times, but it will benefit us through the entire year, so I've taken a "grin and bare it" kind of attitude. It is quite satisfying to see the things you've grown or picked canned, I'm just not always a fan or the process. Hmmm...that sounds like my description of pregnancy....

Last night Mr. N and I did tomatoes. My maternal grandfather is pretty sick right now so my mom flew across the country to be with him and Grandma, so that means the canning has fallen on Mr. N and I. He doesn't mind helping. He really likes to reap what you sow. Tomatoes are okay. I don't mind doing the big tomatoes, but I really can't stand doing the cherry tomatoes. Since tomatoes have to be skinned, I feel like you go through a lot of work skinning each individual cherry. What a headache. I also greatly prefer hot packing tomatoes (i.e. cooking them first before canning them). You get a lot more tomatoes in the jar when they are hot packed, which adds up to not wasting jars. You can tell in the finished product picture which two jars were hot packed and which two jars were raw packed. Oh, and we finally grew one carrot. That's all we managed to harvest. Our neighbor grew these massive, beautiful carrots.... Oh well.

We also did nectarines and peaches last week. The nectarines were about the easiest thing I've ever canned. No hot packing, no skinning...just cut them in half and remove the core! Nice. I always can when I look...crappy (for lack of a better word) and that's always when Mr. N chooses to document. These photos don't do much to boost my self-esteem!

When these two adorable toddlers aren't driving us crazy, they are quite hilarious. M was walking around in Mr. N's shoes and had put his socks on too. (These are the shoes that I bought virtually brand new at a thrift shop for $1 and later found the exact shoes at DSW Shoe Store for $89! Talk about a good deal). Sunday at church M had gone potty and I gave her a fruit snack as a treat. We're getting past the "treat every time you go potty" thing, but I was feeling generous. After she went I decided to go to the bathroom myself. M clapped for me and I asked her, "So does mommy get a fruit snack"? M then tried to pull out some fruit snacks from the bag, but couldn't get them out. She then turned the bad upside down and shook a couple out onto the bathroom floor. Ick. She picked them up and handed them to me with a huge smile saying, "Here you go Mommy!" I took them with a smile and thanked her, all the while cringing, and proceeded to dropped them in the trash when she wasn't looking.

Mr. N was cracking up at L when I snapped these photos for him. Baby L was eating bubbles and had them all over her face. You can't really see them on her in the picture, but it was pretty funny.

On a completely unrelated note, It's after 2:00 pm and I just realized I forgot to eat lunch. Food and I get along very well, and forgetting to eat is virtually unheard of for me. Odd. I don't want to keep my stomach waiting, so I'll call it a day on the blogging front!