We called our first day of canning "burning down the house" because we blew out the fuse on the stove. However, in a strange flick of Irony's impossibly tiny wrist... on the SECOND day of canning, we DID burn down the house! Well, not totally, but the stove sort of... combusted. One of the pots of syrup for the peaches boiled over and the sugar in it formed this ... crystalized LUMP under the burner. Since there was a big pot ON the burner, we dealt with the overflow and didn't see the lump. A few seconds later we realized something smelled bad. Thought at first it was just the stuff burning off, and we saw FLAMES shooting out from under the pot! Being the BRILLIANT kitchen folk that we are, Queenie grabbed the pot and I threw water on the fire... but neither of us TURNED OFF THE BURNER. heheh. We are SO lucky we didn't blow up the house and ourselves along with it! Turned out the fire stopped, we realized the burner was on, turned it off, cleaned up as best we could then pretty much laughed ourselves silly....
I think canning might not be a good passtime for us. Q has been banned (by her husband) from taking up any more hobbys unless it involves playing with rubber legos. On top of her injuries on our first day of canning, yesterday she managed to get a splash of boiling water in her EYE, steam burns on her wrists and fingers, and stepped on a piece of ice (causing her to shriek, drop what she was holding, and skate across the floor with a very cold foot). Even though I am not the one who choses the queenie awards... Queenie gets her own award this week. I think she went above and beyond the recommendations!
In any case, we are very proud of ourselves. We have about 20 jars of fresh canned peaches, 9 jars of homemade kosher dill pickles, and 9 jars of blueberry lime jam. Not too shabby for 2 chicks who hadn't ever done this before! Next time... we just have to be sure and wear fire-retardant clothing. Oh, and try not to plan our TWO-DAY project for the 2 days before my husband comes home and hers runs out of laundry...
2 comments:
ha! Just another reason I buy mine at the grocery store or from someone who canned it at home, but my kitchen has never seen the likes of canning anything other than left overs
But its so SATISFYING to see those jars and know you did it yourself... even though you DIDN'T NEED TO. :-)
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