To Can or Not to Can

Rob is always giving me a bad time that I don't can. In fact it has become a hot topic in a joking way between the two of us. It's not that I don't agree with him; I want to learn how to can. It's just that things always go very wrong around the house when I get busy doing something that doesn't involve wiping noses, serving snacks, or some other child-centered activity. I try telling this to Rob and he just doesn't believe me.


Well the other day Rob brought home a box of peaches and they were super yummy, but we just couldn't eat them fast enough and they were starting to go bad. We didn't want to waste them so Rob and I tried to think of what we could do with them. The obvious thing to do would be to can them but seeing as I don't know how to do that, that option was out. Then I remembered my sister-in-law made some peach jam last year and it was delish. I had made strawberry jam before and it really wasn't that bad so I suggested it to Rob and he thought it was a great idea. I told him my only concern was with the amount of peaches we had left we would get a lot of jam. He didn't believe me. Oh well, I thought, if we're going to make jam, let's REALLY make jam.


STEP ONE: PREPARE SUPPLIES
Ran to the store and got everything we needed . . . I thought.

STEP TWO: BLANCHING
Ya I had no idea how to do this so I called my trusted cooking advisors for help. Evidently I must be a real slow learner because it took explanations from my Aunt Teresa, my mother and me reading a selection out the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook before I felt like I knew enough to try it out. So embarrassing!

STEP THREE: JAMMING
Everyone at my house was either sleeping or happy when we started this step. Even Rob was helping happily!



Unfortunately this happiness did not last long. The first problem we ran into was we didn't do a good job of planning in step one. I knew the peaches would make a lot of jam, I just didn't think it would be this much! I ended up running to the store not once, not twice but four times for jars and pectin. Yes you heard me, FOUR!!

The second problem was my kids went from happy to this:

Poor Kids. It's so hard to not have all of mommy's attention :(

Well to make a long story short, after cleaning up many mommy is busy so look what I can get into messes, saying "no . . .No . . .NNNOOO" to children making those messes more times than I care to admit, and trying to keep everyone calm by ensuring them Mommy and Daddy will be done soon . . . we were finally done. And what did we have to show for our 7 hours of hard jamming labor? 49 jars of luscious peach jam.

I'll be dreaming about jam tonight.

EPILOGUE:

After we were all done with the jam I asked Rob if he could now see why I don't dothis very often. He said yes. But he still thinks I should learn how to can.