Peaches

Kent was working at home today and came upstairs for a little break while I was canning. He immediately grabbed the camera and started taking pictures of me canning. Apparently he thought I should blog bout this. So here you go. There are few things that make me feel more domestic than canning. Probably because my grandmas and mom all did it. Of course they were very domestic. I guess it makes me feel kind of grown up. Not that having a husband and 4 kids shouldn't be enough or anything. But for some reason I always feel domestic and productive when I can stuff. Maybe because there is a product there at the end and I have something to show for my hard work. Too bad that while being extremely domestic and preserving "food for the winter" the rest of the world around me seems to fall apart. The kids get neglected. The house gets neglected and messed up. But at least we will have peaches to eat this winter.

Adele was my "big helper". She actually spent about an hour playing with jars and the little jar-picker-upper thing. Why do I buy toys? Why?

Ah, tasty peaches!

Making Butter

As you know we have been buying milk at a local farm. The milk has cream on the top and we have been using the cream to make butter. We have all been building up our arm muscles with all that shaking!

After we strain it we use the buttermilk in our pancakes. It has been really fun for our family to do some of these "pioneery" things.

Peaches

Sick and Bored

Last week we were busy. This week we are sick and bored. Well, the kids are sick and I am bored. Don't get me wrong, I LIKE to be at home, but after barely leaving the house for 2 days I start to go a bit stir crazy. Having to stay home all day kind of throws me off my schedule. I did can another 7 quarts of applesauce yesterday and had quite an adventure trying not to kill myself while picking apples. I did some pretty tricky climbing maneuvers. Elise would have been proud. Especially since I did not get stuck in the tree like she always does. I did scrape up my arms pretty nicely though. And, I only saw about 1 and 1/2 worms this time. They must have changed from their larval state into whatever creature they become, and crawled out. (Whew)

Here's a cute pic of the sick kiddos watching movies on the couch bed. Elise has missed 2 days of school so far. Emilia only missed 1. Ian came down with the sickness today and had a fever of almost 103. Maybe it is the swine flu. I am waiting to hear back from a friend of mine who has a kid in Elise's class. She took her son to the Dr. today and I think they were going to test him for the "evil" H1N1 virus. So far Adele has been spared and I haven't gotten it yet. Let's hope we won't get it.

Applesauce Impulsivity

We have an apple tree. I think they are Macintosh apples. They have never been very good (because they are really sour) and they always have lots of worms in them *shudder*. I haven't really done much with my apples for these reasons. I had just kind of planned on not doing anything with these ones either and I hoped to get some free golden delicious apples from some neighbors. Well, I was picking up some fallen apples off the ground today and I was thinking that there were actually a lot of pretty decent looking apples at the top of the tree. I decided to pick some. Then I decided I should be frugal and domestic and not let my free (wormy) apples go to waste. I decided to can some applesauce.

At first I was cutting the apples in quarters and then cutting all the wormy cores out. I decided that I'd distract myself from all the gross worminess by counting how many worms I saw so I could blog about it. (My IBV has finally been speaking again.) After about about 5 mintues and 3 and 1/2ish worms I decided I didn't want to count anymore. I didn't even want to LOOK anymore. So I started just cutting off the sides that looked worm-free and not even going into the core. Much better plan.

This one got away. I am not sure how. It did have to die of course after I discovered it.

The finished product. Not all of them are pictured but I canned 12 quarts of applesauce. It only took me 5 hours. (What was I thinking???) My house is now a complete disaster. It was messy before but after letting the kids run free and wild (plus the extra kids I had over this morning) it was even more trashed. But at least now I know that when the end of the world comes (which could be sooner than later with the way things are going), I will have 12 quarts of applesauce for my family to eat. And it was free (well, it only cost me 5 hours). My goal this fall is to fill up all my empty canning jars with food.


I also got a few pears from a neighbor this afternoon to add to my applesauce. I found Adele eating a pear and I took it away from her. I turned it over in my hand and look! Ewwwww!