Home canned goodness with all the convenience and none of the botulism

It's really wonderful to open up a jar of home canned tomatoes when you're looking for something good to make for dinner and the fridge is slim on vegetable pickings. I made tomale pie using almost exclusively preserved and canned food. While that doesn't actually sound mouth watering, the tomatoes Lisa and I canned turned out great and the flavor is very good, the color bright and cheerful.

A long time ago (this summer) I talked about home canning not being a money saving device, because by the time you put in your seven hundred hours of work doing it, and buy your produce and jars, it's not much cheaper than buying them at the super market. However, there are virtues much more important than cost. Obviously quality is a plus, because when you preserve produce yourself you can control the quality of the food being prepared; you can pick it at its peak rather than when its under ripe and the vitamin content is weak.

In this age of rethinking the use we put our resources to, and trying to figure out how to reuse as much as we can to reduce landfill mass and maximize the life of the materials we produce, canning food at home makes a lot of sense. I think about this as I open jars of tomatoes and open the cans of beans from Trader Joe's. The jar gets cleaned and stored against next years summer canning. The bean cans get cleaned and put into recycling. While I'm glad I can recycle those cans, the jars will last many seasons of use and reuse before they have to be sent off to be melted down and remade into new jars or glass slippers or whatever. Environmentally speaking, preserving your own food in jars is very smart.

Unfortunately, most people don't think it's fun enough to spend their hard earned free time leaning over steaming hot pots of jam in hundred degree summer weather to commit to canning their own food. I just don't understand it.

In other news, I still can't believe I have a dog. She turns a year old tomorrow. Plus she threw up her breakfast this morning. Poor Chickadee. Dogs are really gross.

I have finished the pot holders yesterday so today I go and get envelopes for packing them up. I better make sure I have everyone's addresses before I go to work. I am optimistic that they will be in the post by this afternoon. Yahoo!

Lastly: I have found out that this is the "national de-lurking day", invented by grumpy bloggers to inspire all of you quiet lurkers to speak up for yourself and let us know you stopped by. Think of it like this: reading blogs regularly and never ever saying hello is a little bit like ringing someone's doorbell and then running away. I know a lot of my friends read my blog from time to time (because they tell me they do) but almost none of them leave comments. Except for Lucille. (And a few of you have left a rare comment, which I have to tell you always makes my day!) Considering how far away most of my friends and family are, hearing from you in such a casual way gives me the sensation that you are not all that far from me in spite of the miles of road between us.

Having said that, I very much enjoy conversing over the blog fences with other bloggers who do drop in and say hello. So I'm not going to spend another moment sounding like a needy-whiney-ungrateful-ho-bag. From here on out I am zen-master-of-calm-nonchalance.

I've done yoga a few times in my life and somehow, in spite of how this isn't supposed to be possible, I've injured myself twice doing it. I was thinking about how I should probably become a yoga-master-chai-drinking-super-calm-meditative person. But I just wonder if the fact that I have hurt myself twice in the persuit of zen-type exercise is a sign that I am not cut out for that kind of thing. I am trying to figure out what kind of exercise I can do that won't exacerbate my back and hip problems while helping me to strengthen my core and tone my muscles so that one day, when they are not encased in a thick layer of insulation they will not hang down like elephant knees.

I usually use my ellyptical machine for cardiovascular exercise. Plus I ride my bike to work (which isn't saying much since I only live fifteen blocks from the store.) And sometimes I walk the dog. Everything that requires me to bear down on my hip makes it hurt at least a little. Like everything I've just mentioned above.

My other choices for fitness are:
pilates (whatever that entails?)
yoga (provided I avoid spraining my wrist and ankles again)
limited weight lifting (arms only, no back straining deal)
fit ball exercises

All those other hip methods of fitness are not appropriate (or are too expensive). No martial arts, no jogging, no boxing, no boot camp, and certainly no pole dancing. Pole dancing might not be hard on my joints, back, and hips, but I just have zero desire to bust out stripper moves.

Lordy Lou, I sure do sound ancient. (Maybe I should start taking Ensure and buy stock in Depends. I just might beat my mom to the body-breakdown-punch. Pam Kitty Morning suggested becoming friends with Allieve. Is it time to abandon my Advil crutch?

Here's my last thought before I go tackle the work load for the day: It occurs to me to wonder if I would be nearly so creaky at this tender age of 37 if I had been a teen mom? I'm not necessarily saying I support teen motherhood, but there just might be a super good physiological reason women can have children so young. (Well, when our lifespans were about thirty five years it's obvious that the procreating better start early. Even though we live so much longer now, our bodies haven't exactly evolved to meet up with older motherhood.) Your back is much more supple when you're 17 years old than it is when you're 30. I didn't start having back problems until I put it out one day picking Max up recklessly fast and unmindfully. If you have your babies by the time you're twenty, they're too big to pick up by the time your body starts its dark descent into hell.

But honestly, I don't mind this aging process.


*Once again I must point out that the spell check option has gone back to its usual trick of not working. I tried. It bugs me almost as much as it bugs you.