Kitchen Inspiration

The other day I spent time on a kitchen floor other than my own.

A friend called out of the blue and offered to watch my kids. I set up the date and promptly called my mother in law.

What was it that I wanted to do with 3 hours of time away from the kids?  Shop? No.  Clean? Heavens, no.  Relax and read a good book? Well, that would be nice, but I have no time for that.

You see, I wanted to learn to can. Yes, I realize this only adds to the list of things that I can barely keep up with, but food preservation is an addiction for me. By early August, my deep freeze was already full to the seams and the garden still had more to give. I had never encountered this dilemma in previous years, so I bought me some beautiful new jars and set a goal.

I excitedly prepped my salsa the night before my canning lesson, surprised by how buckets and buckets of tomatoes and green peppers and onions condensed into one large pot of bubbling salsa.

The next day I packed it all up, dropped off the kids, and set up shop in my mother in law's kitchen. (I'm not entirely sure if I can pressure cook on my glass cook top, so her gas range, pressure cooker and years of experience fit the bill.)

After a few initial instructions and a few dumb blonde moments on my part, my beautiful new jars were packed, covered and sealed into a pressure cooker happily singing away.

We passed the time by chatting, paging through canning books, admiring the hair dos in the 1930s instruction manual that came with the pressure cooker, and perusing through my mother in law's canning journal.

Yes. You heard me right. A canning journal - dating back to the mid 1980s. A small blue notebook contained an annual inventory of all items she had canned for her busy farming family of 4 hungry boys.

I was inspired! How is it possible that I, plagued by what I affectionately call the DeVries curse (I'll save explanations on that one for another post), do not yet have a journal such as this?  My mind raced with the possibilities of the things I could record and color code.

A beeping sound brought me back to reality, and it was time to take the hot jars of the cooker. After a brief instruction on proper canning tong usage, I set my jars of salsa on the counter and heard for the first time what has quickly been added to my list of favorite sounds: the delightful *pop* of those little lids snapping into place to seal my garden bounty into beautiful jars.

(Wish I would have left the skirts on the jars for the picture, but oh well. And I can't determined if this photo is out of focus or if I'm just distracted by all the dust!)

And what about my inspiration for a canning journal? Well, my friends, a quiet and rainy Labor Day has solved that problem. I now have my own canning journal (in addition to the colored coded Excel spreadsheet I use for my freezer inventory.)