hiatus schmiatus

my computer was on the verge of crash, and my awesome brother fixed it. except that now the internal camera card reader doesn't work and the touch pad for the mouse is super sensitive. Try commenting on a status on social media and suddenly you've scrolled up the page about 15 other statuses.


The solution to the problem, at present, is to make use of the library computers.

Someone gave my parents a half a bushel of peaches, and I canned them [In Brittan they call it bottling - which makes way more sense than canning - it's not a can, it's a jar]. Because that's a lot of peaches and no one likes peach pie at our house and I don't know know to make wine or shrub, and let's not talk about how much peach preserve I already put up. And this time, I remembered to bring the canning bath back with me. So I packed the remaining peaches in a simple super light syrup with some brandy and cinnamon, and there was one small scoop of peaches left, so it got plopped into a half pint jelly jar. After the 25 minute processing time, I pulled the lid off to discover peaches floating in the water - the bottom had sheered off the jelly jar. I think it's my canning rack. There was nothing under the jelly jar to keep it from touching the bottom. No jam processing for me, unless it's in the big jars, or I get a different rack. At least I didn't loose all the peaches. This is rather sad, since I really wanted to can the cantaloupe and blackberries this weekend [they're taking up valuable real estate]

 I spent Labor Day making kiwi daiquiri jam, black berry jelly, and out of this world peach salsa. The kiwi jam isn't as green as you think it would be. The recipe suggested adding food coloring... but since the whole purpose of canning is to avoid additives, that seemed a little counter productive. Of course, once I got all of these tasties packed, I ran into the small problem of where I was going to put it...

This is what reorganized looks like. I have room for more now. The peaches are separated by what I suspect are spiked/not spiked. The flat on the very top is stacked two deep. I'm pretty sure this isn't the best way to store canned goods, but it's what I've got, and the room maintains a fairly constant 68 degrees all year long.