A little giggle and my thoughts while canning

While I was browsing blogs early Sunday morning I came across a very funny lady and a post that cracked me up. I forwarded it to my youngest sister and she thought it was hilarious -- if you have time for a laugh, check out Becauze I Said So. Scroll down to Friday's entry (Aug 22) titled An Author Gets Her Start. She comments on drawings she made as a child - very funny!

Back to my world, my tiny little garden is still producing cucumbers at a record pace. I don't understand this. In other years, we got just enough to eat and a few to share. Maybe it's our comfortably wet year, but this is what we got in two days -

So I made MORE pickles.
Now I've never had this happen, have you? I heard a pop (didn't sound good) and when I looked, the lid on this half-gallon jar had buckled outward! I thought we'd have to use these right away but can you believe it still sealed?! You should have heard it pop back! It's got a little wrinkle to the lid but it's a solid seal.
After the pickles were complete, I realized I had to do something with the apples, so I made pie filling. And we had too many necatrines so I made jam. Then I picked tomatoes at Tammy's and they became salsa (the kids' special request), more spaghetti sauce and tomato juice.
Are you all sick of seeing photos of home canning jars in my kitchen? Me too. So this is the last one I promise, as I am officially putting away the canner for this year.

While I was canning I had a lot of time to think so I was trying to answer my husband's question - why do you do all this? Granted, it is a lot of work. Besides the obvious - first, I'm so frugal I just can't stand to see anything go to waste and second, when you make it yourself you know what goes into it, that it's clean and chemical free. (If you don't know, I have this thing about eating chemicals and artificial food!) So besides that - I think that some people have a special drive to do-it-yourself. I'm not saying that's necessarily always a good thing. I admit that there are times when I spend way too much time, effort and frustration when it would be far more logical to just buy it!

But also I was thinking about some influences from my childhood. My paternal grandmother read me the story about the little bread baking hen. Do you remember? As she sowed, tended, harvested the wheat, ground it to flour and made the bread dough, she asked for help at each step of the way but all the other animals declined as they were too busy enjoying other activities - like playing in the sunshine etc. So as you can guess - in the end the little hen had wonderful fresh bread to eat while they had none because they had spent their all their time indulging themselves. Oh how I took that to heart! Then when I got just a little older she told me the real story about the poor pilgrims who starved to death because they didn't anticipate the hard winter and weren't properly prepared. Remember that one?!

My husband keeps telling me we're not going to starve . . . Yeah I know, now we're not! You just go play in the sunshine Rude, I've got you covered.