Okay, so there are a few requirements to living in Utah. The one that I am currently working on is the art of canning. I have been somewhat hesitant......not because I think it is lame, but because I am lame and afraid to do it. Some things I can't just read about and feel confident in executing. I can't just buy some jars and a large pot and give those veggies a water bath. Safety requires much more. So, our friend, Bonnie, feeling sorry for me, decided to walk us through a session of apricot jam canning. Basically she did it and I assisted, but it did the trick. I was ready to venture out on my own. Plus Todd has been pushing it for awhile and he decided to plant like 14 tomato plants. I really had no choice. I bought the pressure cooker(because if I'm going to do it, let's do it right). I looked up directions on line and I was off. The start was going pretty well. I peeled the tomatoes with the boiling water to ice water procedure. I filled the jars and was sterilizing the lids. I put the jars in for their "bath" and waited....and waited and waited for a boil. Okay, so my pot is huge and my stove doesn't get so hot. All I really got were some bubbles here and there. So now I have a giant, almost boiling pot on my stove. I don't know whether it is boiling enough to start the 45 minute timer. Then I notice that one jar has broken. "Great, is another one going to explode and go flying into my face or one of my girls?" Now the fun is all gone and I am afraid. I boiled it(semi-boiled) it for double the time just to be sure. If I really knew about canning then maybe I would have known what to do or what to expect. This is the whole reason I had taken so long to do it in the first place. By the end of the evening I was high strung and flustered. Not the best experience in my life. I will give it another try, though....but not for a little bit.
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