The dangerous side of canning

Yesterday Lisa E. and I canned peaches and had the honor to do it while chatting like magpies with the food writer for our local paper, the News Register. Nicole Montesano is a woman who I was prepared to envy professionally. I'm happy to report that I must be maturing in my old age, finally. I ended up just having a great time and can't help but enjoy the fact that Nicole loves cooking and preserving as much as Lisa and I do. Rather than feel any envy, I felt we were all in very good company.

I will definitely invite Nicole to join our canning club if I ever get around to organizing one. She doesn't have anyone to can with and I think that needs to change.

It's difficult to concentrate on this post today because my burn blisters are leaking right now. I generally have the grace of a floating swan, obviously, but my grace must have slipped a disc yesterday while I was toting a pot of hot water to the outside canner because I sloshed boiling water onto my foot. I've splattered myself with hot water before, and hot oil, and hot marinara sauce, but none of those accidents can compare to the doozy I achieved yesterday. The pain was intense. The blistering was instant. I took pictures to show you, but I've decided that I will be magnanimous and spare your eyes.

Most of the time when I've hurt myself I don't feel such a fascination with the injury. I have to admit that this injury has cast a spell on me and I can't stop being aware of it and my eyes naturally drift towards it every two minutes to see what it's doing now. It's a pretty active injury. I'm not quite sure what to do about it.

But let's stop talking about my burn. Let's talk about how peaches, it turns out, are kind of tricky to preserve. This batch was easy to pit, being a freestone variety, but they wouldn't peel with blanching. It seems you can either get the skin off easily, or pit them easily, but not both. Almost every jar oozed out peachy syrup after being removed from the canner making a big sticky mess and lowering the contents of the jars. Today we're going to do the rest of our peaches using the hot pack method rather than raw pack. This way we'll be able to make an immediate comparison and see how they differ.

I ended my evening with many episodes of Alias. I just want to say, for the record, I KNEW LAUREN WAS EVIL. I knew it. I told Philip that if I die, he should avoid marrying any gorgeous blonds because I'm probably not really going to turn out to be dead anyway, and it's obvious that if he marries a thin blond chick she's going to turn out to be an enemy spy. I also want to add that I'm getting just a little fed up with Michael's sad puppy eyes. Let up for crying out loud.

Yes, I'm very caught up in it all. It's such a silly show but I'm completely hooked. I really want Sydney's mother to turn out to have really reformed. I love Lena Olin. I also have warmed up to Sydney's father Jack who has become a much more sympathetic character over the past couple of seasons. Anyone notice how no one really stays dead on this show?

I have a rather rotten head ache and I have papers to sign and send before resuming the peach project. So I suppose I should get out of this office and hop into action.

Here are the other canning projects lining up:
salsa
crushed tomatoes
more ratatouille (to freeze)
pickled eggplant (to freeze)
marinated 3 bean salad
dill pickles
pears
apple sauce
pesto

No problem. I can do it. School starts next week. I will use that time to accomplish my canning, reorganizing my website, gardening, sewing, cleaning, and breathing. This summer has been brutal. Next summer I'm signing Max up for nonstop camp.