Saturday was the maiden voyage of my pressure canner, and it appears to have been successful. “Appears” I say, because we haven’t actually eaten anything I’ve canned, because that would be kind of beside the point.
We’re going to wait a week before we do that.
I canned four pints of green beans (the fourth pint wasn’t all that full, but it was close), and found it easier than I expected, once the beans were all snapped and washed and ready to go.
Which brings me to a question – what’s the difference between canning beans raw and canning them cooked? Doesn’t the processing actually cook the beans? Is it that you can fit more cooked beans in a jar, or is there some other reason?
I know someone out there knows the answer to this – tell me what the deal is, would you, please?
Also, while I’m asking, can you or can you not (har!) can summer squash? The Ball Blue Book doesn’t offer any information at all about canning it, only freezing it.
And lastly, thank you to those of you who recommended the Ball Blue Book. When I got the pressure canner, I eagerly looked through the manual, and I got seriously worried, because it made NO SENSE to me at all. One look through the Blue Ball Ball Blue Book, and I knew exactly what I was supposed to be doing. It’s awesome!
* * *
A few weeks ago I realized that I’d earned enough Fresh Step “Paw Points” to get a “snuggle sack” for the cats. So I ordered it, it came a lot faster than I expected, I took it out of the package, and left it on the floor near Fred’s desk until I could decide where to put it (probably the kitten room, I’m thinking).
Now, the Snuggle Sack has some of that crinkly stuff in it so that when a cat climbs in, it crinkles.
It sounds exactly – EXACTLY – like someone opening a bag of chips, and without fail when I first hear the noise I perk up and think “Who is eating yummy yummy chips, and why is no one sharing with me, and OH I hope they’re sour cream and onion!”, and then it is with great disappointment when I realize what I’m really hearing.
“I are not a bag o’ chips, muthah.”
* * *
If that bit above isn’t enough to convince you that I have the memory of a goldfish (the joke being that they have such tiny brains and short memory that they spend their life swimming around their bowl going “Oh! A castle!… Oh! A castle!”, etc.), I had the following discussion with myself no less than three times in the course of one hour.
“Oh, GROSS. What the hell is that, did Maxi kill a mole and leave it on the side step? I wish they wouldn’t DO THAT, now I have to go out the front door when I leave. Oh, it’s a leaf from the magnolia tree. Much better.”
Three times in the course of an hour, the same conversation, word-for-word, I swear it.
Finally I went out and kicked the leaf off the side of the stoop so it’d stop catching my eye.
* * *
The universe, it seems, does not want to let me get a single night’s sleep. If the spud isn’t calling me at 1 am to double-check her work schedule (AHEM, SPUD), the cats decide the middle of the night is an A-OK time for screeching and fighting and racing around and across my bed, or complete strangers are text messaging me.
Last night (this morning) at 12:50, my cell phone beeped to let me know I’d gotten a text message. I checked to see what it was, knowing it wasn’t the spud, because she was at home, sound asleep. It was a text message from a number that was completely unfamiliar to me (though it was local), and the message read
im so pissed off right now
I texted back a succinct and to-the-point
? and pretty quickly got back
sorry i texted the wrong number.
As I fell back to sleep, I amused myself with the thought that I could probably have carried on a complete conversation with this person (teenager, I assumed) using only symbols. Such as:
Them: im so pissed right now
Me: ?
Them: my parents are being ridiculous they dont trust me they always make me check in with them and they always make me run errands for them while they sit on their asses and do nothing
Me: !
Them: i hate it here, this place sucks, i should just run away
Me: š
And so forth.
* * *
Spanky giggles evilly about his thievery of Sugarbutt’s favorite place to sleep.
* * *
Previously
2006: No entry.
2005: Iād say this country is going to hell, but that handbasket sailed a loooooong time ago.
2004: Yes. Robyn DID recently learn how to do popup windows. Why do you ask?
2003: Do I LOOK like an outside kinda gal?
2002: Which is when I realized that I’d actually dreamed the conversation and hug and kiss.
2001: No entry.
2000: No entry.]]>