WE BE CANNING!

Any canners out there? I've wanted to try to can for the past two summers but found myself ridiculously intimidated by the entire process. I excitedly bought the canner and all of the accompanying equipment last spring and Tim gave me two beautiful books on canning for my birthday last summer. I poured over the books, reading the hows, whats, and the do nots but couldn't gather the courage to actually do it. There's a woman with a stand at our local farm market who always had the best zucchini relish in the world, but she stopped selling it last year. She was kind enough to give me her recipe, but there was still a big case of nerves in my way. I finally pushed them aside and made a batch of relish this past Saturday. It turned out beautifully! And now I'm hooked!

I'm officially a canner! Kelsey had all four impacted wisdom teeth out on Monday and I stayed home with her for the day. Spent the afternoon making strawberry/rhubarb jam while she dozed under Vicodin's lazy, hazy spell. Again, success!

Now I'm digging through my canning books like a mad woman, looking for recipes that my family will enjoy and that, just as importantly (to me), will look gorgeous in the jars when finished! I've decided that my next venture will be a three berry jam with strawberries, blueberries and blackberries, all picked by our own hands earlier this summer and frozen. After that, some pickled corn for Tim. I've never tried it but he claims to like it so I'll give it a shot. Did I mention that the zucchini and green peppers for the relish and the rhubarb for the jam were from our very own garden? What a wonderful sense of accomplishment! Sorry to ramble, but I get almost giddy just thinking about it!

Until my next batch of jam this weekend, I'll be baking more plain zucchini bread, blueberry zucchini bread and pineapple zucchini bread. I'm feeling very much the domestic goddess right now. Do you like to bake? Cook? Can? Did you grow up in a "canning" home? I remember my mother canning green beans and tomato juice every summer. We didn't have air conditioning and she would get up in the middle of the night so the house would be a little cooler. One Christmas after I was married, my mother gave me a case of green beans that she had canned as my gift from her - I enjoyed the heck out of every single quart! Are you as impressed as I am by the gorgeous ribbon-winning canned goods at your county fair?

Do any of you garden? We put out a few things this year - lettuce, peppers (green, purple and hot), carrots, onions, tomatoes (red, pink and "Tommy Toes"), and zucchini. The rhubarb has been growing in the front flower bed for a few years now. I have to be honest though and admit that I'm not such a good gardener. Tim gets the dirt ready and I plant the seeds and the seedlings, but once there's above-ground vegetation, there's also spiders, bugs, slugs, and other assorted critters for whom those stalks and leaves are the 'hood - I refuse to stick my hands in amongst them!

Hope you're all having a great week!

Laurie