Harvesting, Round 1

Well ... it's been an interesting few days, mostly spent in the kitchen, acquiring sore shoulders.

On Wednesday, I was given six gallons of already shelled peas. I gave away about two gallons, which left me four. Now that may not sound like a lot, but believe me, four gallons of peas is a lot of peas. I've been washing, sorting, blanching, drying, freezing and bagging these things up for three days now. I'm almost done. And now I'm blogging about them ... what am I turning into?!?

Oh yeah, peas smell wierd too.

Also, since our freezer is jam pack full of frozen peas now, I needed to do something with eight and a half pounds of blueberries that were brought back from Michigan on Monday ... well, I took some strawberries and turned it into my first ever batch of Blueberry Strawberry Jam. I ended up with four pints of that, canned and ready to go on the shelf. I am still freezing berries for pies and muffins and what not, but it gave me a little more room to move in the freezer.

What is it about me that won't let anything go? I've got a container full of old celery stalks, carrot tops, etc for making soup base. I've got three or four chicken carcasses in the freezer for soup base, in addition to a ham hock, also waiting to be turned into soup. I've got frozen blueberries, rhubarb, asparagus, green beans, apples, cherries and corn, all ready for who knows what. I can make at least six pies and four batches of soup, and still have enough food to serve with meals ... it's not like I grew up hungry every night. Sure, money was tight, but we were never THAT broke that there was no food in the house. We ate a lot of hot dogs and fish sticks, however. Or maybe it's the "grama" in me coming out ...

All I know is I need to invest in a pressure canner and a lot of Mason jars ...