
Yeah, I march to the beat of my own drum. {shrug} meh… it makes me interesting (or weird depending on your perspective).
As odd as it sounds to folks who buy all their veggies at the supermarket, there was a time in my life when I did a lot of canning. I had more time in my time then… I actually did a lot of sewing and crafting and other dorkey stuff, like square dancing. Hmmmmm… where did all my “free” time get off to? I guess the ducks ate it.
Most folks do their canning in the oppressive heat of August because that's when the biggest portion of the fruit is ripe. It’s a cruel trick of timing to be trapped in an already steamy kitchen with 10 boiling pots on the stove and a pressure canner hissing loudly for hours on end. This is why I would like to build a “summer kitchen” outside where I can do the everyday grilling as well as the canning. No sense in heating up the house that you pay good money to cool, right?
So, the reason I wasn’t canning with the rest of the country is that, while I had a million blossoms in the garden, I was terribly short on pollinators this year. That's why there's no tomato sauce or pickled peppers or salsa or green beans put up at my house for winter {sigh}. I had just about enough to cover some of my own meals but not all the extra I had planned and planted for. There's always next year... guess I may need to look into raising my own bees since Monsanto is doing a bang-up job of killing all the others.

To that end, this weekend Farmer Jackie and I dusted off the old canning equipment and pulled out my boxes of jars, lids, and rings. It was a good test run before the serious work began. She also made 3 big pots of soups for us to freeze so that we could have healthy, hearty (and thrifty) lunches for the next couple of weeks. MMMMMMM… made from scratch lentil, split pea, and yellow pea soups. Yummo!
So once the dried legumes were re-hydraded, the various soups were set on the stove to do their thing...
(yeah, everyone says to peel them, but I'm a peels-on kind of gal)
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