Canned!

Thats right! Cannin! This mama has been a canning machine. Only really canned one thing in my life so far, but I think it is a start.

When we were younger, I mentioned that my Mom and Dad had an enormous garden, from which Mom canned almost everything. She said she taught herself how to do it. That is pretty awesome. It seems much more simple than what it was years ago, helping my Mom. Most the time we had to stand back and watch because of the boiling water and veggies.

She canned tomatoes, green beans, Dill pickles, and beets. I remember her hands breaking out and the skin cracking. She said it was from cutting up the millions of tomatoes. But, we had veggies to last us through the winter. Oh, it reminds me of an old story you read in history books. Mother canning all the vegetables to prepare for the winter. I remember it being an all day event, from early morning to evening. Then the waiting to hear the pops of each of the cans to see if they "seal." See, when you can, you have to make sure they seal, otherwise the canning process has kind of failed. Then you have to refrigerate and eat the food before it spoils. I do remember all of us kids helping, and probably causing a lot of the jars "not" to seal by pressing on the lid, and Mom saying, "Don't touch that" What I didn't realize is by doing that, we were kind of ruining all her hardwork of storing food.

The reason this came about was my mother-in-law Deena, happens to still can quite a bit to this day. My two favorite things she makes is zuchini relish, and cranberry-banana jam. I found my third favorite to be her homemade salsa! She had stayed with us for a couple weeks to help out Jessica during the day with new baby Sydney.

I came home one day to find she had bought everything, and I do mean everything to make cranberry-banana jam. I was a little intimidated at first. I can cook, but I am far from Ms. Susie Home-maker! So, we did it. Well, she did most of it, and I was her helper. Watching step by step, wondering if I really would try to do it again by myself. We made 9 jars of jam. Waited till the next morning to find out, every single one of them SEALED! I mean that was the best feeling overall. Knowing that we "conquered" each and every jar. Haha!

So, last night, I headed over to Jessica's house to do another batch. Not really planning on it, we gave most of the jars away to family and a few friends the week prior. I mean I was so proud of this jam, pretty sure a few people had to laugh at me, but that is okay. Nothing was going to put me down about making my first batch of successful jam. So, I made last nights jam, by myself, going through step by step with Jessica. I was so worried when it was all done, that not one of my jars was going to seal.

Do you know that each one of the five we made sealed?! Yes, this sounds so crazy, but i mean this made my day. Now, I am going to proceed to find other things that I could can! I can't wait.

I hope this allows some of you to smile, cuz well, I know it all sounds kind of crazy. But if you be nice to me, I know canned jam, makes quite a good little Christmas gift!