Just Call me Betty Crocker or Susie Homemaker

I am turning into a regular homemaker. During the week of "Fall Break" (October 6-10) I made homemade strawberry freezer jam.

Here is a picture of my second (2nd) batch of strawberry jam for this year. Pretty impressive, isn't it? I think so. I made 12 pints of jam and 12 half-pints of jam to give away with a loaf of bread at Christmas time.

Three days later, on October 11th, my sister, April, and I got together to can pears. What an adventure that was, with eight kids (her 5 and my 3) running around my little house. Can you imagine the fun? Luckily, April has kids the same age as my girls and they play well together.

About one-third of the way through the canning process, I heard Bridget start crying while the kids had been playing out in the backyard. Evidentally, the kids had been sliding down the "waterslide" that Reed had built for the girls this summer. The only problem is that they were doing it without water and Katelyn had pushed Bridget down the slide. Well on her way down the slide, she cut open her left knee. She started walking toward the back door screaming and blood dripping down her leg. It looked to me like there was a big gash of skin missing from her knee. It wasn't really missing skin, but the knee had been split open. I called Sister Jensen from down the street (she is a school nurse and Allison Jensen's mother-in-law) to come down and look at it and tell me if she thought that it needed stitches. She said that she definitely thought that it needed stitches especially because of where the laceration was. I left April with all of the kids (minus Bridget of course), with the pears only 1/3 of the way canned and took Bridget to urgent care where she received 5 stitches. She is my only child who has ever had stitches and she has had them TWICE now. Is this kid accident prone or what?

After our two hour adventure at urgent care, I came home to help April finish canning the pears. She had done a good job keeping track of the kids and still getting some more of the canning done. We were able to finish up the rest of the pears and get them all sealed. We ended up with 31 quarts, which we split between the two families (luckily we were able to keep the extra quart since you can't split them in half).

Here is a picture of my pears, aren't they pretty? I think so. It feels so good to be adding to the food storage for my family.

I have learned so much over the years about food storage. I know that there is a lot more that I would like to learn. My next canning adventure is to learn to can chicken. I use chicken so much for dinners that I would love to have some ready to use. Watch for my next "Susie Homemaker/Betty Crocker" post. LOL