More canning

Marian and I pickled and canned beets yesterday and steam juiced elderberries to make jam. We only made one small batch of jam because of time constraints. We'd originally planned to pickle green beans too but they were too mature for pickling.

Beets:








Elderberry mash (compost):


The process:


I don't have any pictures of the finished product. Maybe Marian will take some of that and the juice. It was interesting to see how the colors of the two juices were so similar. We actually needed to double check ourselves a couple of times before pouring juice. Side by side it's not a problem- but separated you start to second guess. I got a dozen small jars of beets and one small jar of jelly to sample. We'll finish the jelly on Tuesday.

Home today...

Usually on Sunday afternoon I have dinner with my parents and, if we have no afternoon service, I spend the afternoon with Robert and Carrie. Today, however, I decided to stay home. My house needs some serious organizational effort but now that I'm here, I have no motivation and no inkling of where to start. I need more storage space- a pantry would be nice. All my recent canning adventures have left cans sitting in boxes on my kitchen table along with the scraps from my recent sewing adventures. Add to that the boxes from the new computer, 3 bags of dvd cases and a large pile of old VHS, and most of the contents of the sewing room closet and you can see I've got a disaster to try to rectify. I sort of see a small bit of purpose in Mom's clean as you go philosophy, but then I'd never get anything done.

Unfortunately, right now all I want to do is take a nap.