it's about TIME!

So...it's official! And it's about time.  

Since I've taught hundreds of ladies how to preserve their produce, but never done it myself, I figured there's no better time than NOW.

The Ex-Bonneville County Extension Agent (what does one call oneself who no longer exists?) has finally practiced what she preached.  With only 16 phone calls to my mamma, the REAL professional.

Besides flooding my kitchen, everything went off without a hitch!  Go Me!! (When the pressure-cooker is a-steamin', and the fan is a-whirrin', one should never fill the sink with hot water for jars, then sit down to rest in front of the computer for ten minutes...only to forget...because one cannot hear...the water running.  It only takes about 60 seconds to fill up my sink.  I had one side plugged with hot jars, and the other side filling with cold water for tomatoes, which was also plugged.  So if I was out of the room for ten minutes, there was about 10 sink-fulls of water...everywhere...what a mess.)  Lesson learned.  I told Ryan that from now on, I'm only allowed to 'do' one food at a time...no more doubling up on produce to can!  LOL!

10 quarts of Green Beans: (which are from our garden, and I bribed Tanner and Taylor to help me wash and snip for 2 hours this morning...they.were.troopers.)

many hands make light work

lightning-speed  bean-snapping

The best-darned bean snappers I could hire

I washed and snapped the ends.
Taylor and Tanner snapped the beans into thirds.
We had an exceptional math lesson on fractions.
We also learned about measurements and how big
one inch really is.  I ditched that when Tanner started
measuring every snapped bean against the example. 

Pretty beans, ready to be processed.
(I know...they're a little on the big side, but we just went for it.)

7 pints of Zesty Salsa: (including the hottest peppers EVER! from our garden and featuring delicious tomatoes from the farmer's market....)

I simply cannot wait to get the electric bill for this weekend.  The stove was on pretty much all day.  If it wasn't processing beans, it was cooking down salsa.  At one point, it was processing both beans AND salsa...