Pickles!

Canning season is here!  I'm super excited (or at least, I'm gonna fake it til I make it).  This is my first summer as a canner.  Last year, my sister and I learned how to can at the of the summer, so we missed most of summer's bounty.

There are a lot of moving parts when it comes to canning.  First and foremost, you need a trusted recipe and you need to follow that recipe to the letter.  I am the kind of person who never met a recipe she didn't tweak, but when it comes to canning, NO TWEAKING ALLOWED.  Second, you need a canner.  Most people start with water bath canning before progressing to pressure canning.  I actually use an old stock pot that is literally big enough for me to climb into.  Other tools that will help are a funnel, a head-space measure, a jar grabber, and a magnet.  The only one of those things that I have is a jar grabber.

The complexity of the canning process is entirely dependent on what you are canning.  Pickles are a super easy "intro to canning."

Last weekend, my mother-in-law invited me over to pick veggies from her garden.  I walked away with 10 pounds of pickling cucumbers.  Over the course of the intervening week (between working on my bathroom and trying to fix a faulty sewing machine), I turned all those gorgeous cukes into pickles.

I used a recipe from SB Canning because her website is well-known and trusted.  I followed her recipe for dill pickles and canned 12 pints of pickles.

I had one guy who didn't want to seal, so I stuck it in the fridge.  I did some as spears and some as slices.  The only thing I changed was the spices.  Instead of adding each spice separately, I used a "pickling spice" from McCormick.

Trying to find the fuel

Here's a pickle.  I was sitting here thinking that I would write a post about how unfocused I've been lately, but I can't seem to focus on the words.  Ironic.

So here's my dilemma (a first world problem if there ever was one).  I have all this beautiful food coming in from my CSA and while I usually manage to eat or share everything before it spoils, I haven't been making full use of summer's bounty. 

I've been feeling unfocused, out of sorts, lazy.  We've been ordering out way too much...I find myself hitting the cafeteria and/or vending machine frequently here at work.  I don't know why I feel this way, but I think part of it is the lack of organization in my house.  Another part is a general lack of good sleep.  The first part I can do something about, but the second part is something only time can fix.  Eventually my children will grow and won't want to sleep with me (I hope). 

Of course, eating take out doesn't exactly fill my body with the right mix of nutrients to keep me going strong and when the food I eat makes me tired and lazy, then I don't want to cook good, healthy food and so we eat more convenience food, which perpetuates the cycle of feeling tired and lazy.

Last summer, I learned to can at the end of the season and I told myself that I would can everything as each season came this year.  But I've already missed strawberry season and if I keep allowing myself to be lazy, I'll miss everything.

I need to recommit myself to meal planning, canning and freezing the summer harvest and exercising to maximize what little energy I can muster.

Meanwhile, if anyone wants to come be my night nanny so mama can sleep a little, come on over.

Parents, Wake Up (an off topic post)

This post is off the topic of food and farms, but it's my blog so I can write about whatever I want. Every summer, I read stories that break my heart about children left in hot cars, where they roast--literally--and die.

For a long time, I--like many others--vilified these parents as evil at worst and bad parents at best. But then I read this article from the Washington Post and it changed my perspective. I saw how even the most devoted of parents could become distracted and forgetful. Especially when taking the kids to school or daycare wasn't a normal part of their routine. These parents had made a mistake, and don't we all make mistakes? Can't we all look at something we've done and say, there but by the grace of god do I still have my child? These parents made a terrible, awful mistake and paid the ultimate price for it. 

But this summer, my perspective is shifting again. There have been four recent incidents of kids left in cars in my state alone in the past two weeks. Thankfully they weren't all fatal, but they weren't all accidents either. Some of these parents intentionally left their kids in the car, and were called out on it. 

I can't say that I've never left my kids alone in the car. I have. But I've done it carefully and with close consideration of where we were at the time. I will only leave them alone in the car if I'm in a rural location where I know no one is likely to approach the car, and I can see the car at all times. I also let the baby take naps in the car. As every parent knows nothing puts the baby to sleep like riding the car. And not all babies make the transfer into the house successfully. So I park my car in the shade, roll down the windows, open the back doors and the trunk and let him sleep, checking on him every few minutes. Even with those safeguards, he usually wakes up fairly sweaty. 

My point is I'm not immune to leaving the kids in the car and walking away, but the difference is I've never forgotten that my children were in the car. The phenomenon of hot kids in cars is one that scares the pants off me and for that reason, I tend to be extra vigilant about these things. 

So back to the main point. This seems to be happening more than ever, or at least I seem to be hearing about it more and more. There is no longer any excuse. With headlines every week about babies in hot cars, kids dying in hot cars, parents being arrested for leaving kids in hot cars, there is no excuse for forgetting your child is in the car. 

People suggest doing things like leaving your purse or briefcase in the backseat, taking off a shoe and leaving it in the backseat, writing a note on on the window in dry erase marker or even using decals as a reminder. If that's what you need to do to remember your kid is in the car, then do it! Or make it a habit to look in the backseat every time you leave the car. 

The modern age is distracting, there is no doubt about that. But we cannot use technology as a distraction as an excuse for forgetting what's most important to us. If your phone is too much of a distraction, then turn it off leave it in that purse or briefcase in the backseat and don't get it until you get out of the car. 

What's more important? Answering that last text? Making an important phone call? Or getting your kid where he or she needs to be safely?

Parents, this job is hard. But stop making excuses and make your kids your priority. No more kids should die this way.