Discovery

It has been cold and drizzly-rainy now for a couple of days.  I'm loving it.  Today we got the weekly marketing done, spiffed up the house, and Duff and I straightened up the south garage.  We all just seem to put things in there when we don't know what to do with them or when they don't seem to find their way to their 'place' or if they are waiting for a 'place'.  Haha.  It's the California version of a basement.

Since we were going through things, I had Duff get down all the empty boxes for our canning jars up above the cupboards so I could go through them.  Oh dear.  Surprise!  They were completely filled with empty quart jars.  WHAT?  Yep.  So I set up a card table and sorted through all of them by wide or regular mouth, Ball or Kerr and repacked them and labeled all the boxes with masking tape and a sharpie.  Not counting all the filled quarts that I just did in AZ, we have 13 dozen empty quart jars!  Duff was like, "Where did we get all these jars!?"  I reminded him when we were first married and living in my parents Orem house it was on 3/4 of an acre and had a huge orchard in the front and we canned our brains out during summer and fall.

There was a huge non-thorn raspberry patch.  Peach trees.  Apricot trees.  Grape vines.  Apple trees.  Cherry trees.  And around them all we grew the most amazing gardens.  It seemed like every week I was buying another box or two of jars.  We were poor young married college students with two babies and we lived on that orchard and garden.  And so we still have all those jars and they have gone with us during every move.

I have about an equal amount of each brand so I'm going to keep all the Ball jars here and take the Kerr jars to the cabin.  Now I know I don't need to buy bottles anymore there.  They are all in perfect condition.  They just need some new rings and seals.  I'm going to replace them with the new polished silver ones.  They look really nice!  Out with the gold.  The change in trends is always interesting.

Any suggestions on what else I should fill my newly discovered empty jars with?  Oak Glen apples are ready.  Maybe applesauce (we go through a lot of that). Does anyone have a good apple pie filling that can be bottled?

On another canning note:  During this early married time in my life, I used to do things a lot with my Auntie Dolene (Darlene).  We were just 13 years apart, and I was having my first babies while she was having her last.  We would get together each season and can.  She taught me a lot of tips and tricks standing at her kitchen sink.  We did pears and peaches and tomatoes and carrots and green beans. She made the best bread and butter pickles.  We laughed and talked and tried to solve the world's problems.  I loved to go to her basement into her fruit room.  It was cool and dark with wall to wall shelves from the floor to the ceiling full of her harvest preservation for the coming year.  No window; and I loved pulling the string to turn on the light and see everything in perfect order. Nothing was out of place in that room.  The summer of 1980 when Josh was born she and a neighbor did all my green beans and carrots since I had a nursing newborn.  I drove to her house ready to can with a toddler and baby and all their gear in tow and when I walked in she surprised me with filled bottles and packed boxes.  So we spent the day visiting instead.  I will never forget that.  We had roast chicken leftovers and two pieces of yellow cake with chocolate frosting for lunch that she had saved for us.  Good memory.