Never Say Never

Have you ever found yourself doing something you swore you'd never do? I mean, nothing that'll get you locked up overnight or anything, but just something that you hated growing up & vowed you'd die before you did it, but then later in life you find yourself... well, doing it? Yeah, I'm there.

Okay, so when I was growing up, my parents and grandparents raised enormous gardens. I have loads of nightmares... err... precious memories of trudging through those gardens on blazing hot days looking for treasures lurking under prickly plants. The downside was, I would sweat buckets. The upside was the months of canned and frozen produce our family would be able to eat.

Being too cool for such madness, I swore I'd never can home grown food. Being the child of someone whose own parents survived the Great Depression, I think my grandparents had probably talked my parents into eating shoe leather at some point. Is it just me or did anyone else's grandparents make things like persimmon preserves and pepper jellies? And I wonder why I wasn't voted "Most Popular" in my class... but I digress.

My parents went out of town a few weeks ago and their garden was bursting at the seams with tomatoes. Don't get me wrong, I love the red fruits, but a girl can only eat so many! I had 2 enormous pots full and then it hit me, "I'm gonna have to can these suckers!". Even though my parents were miles away at the beach, I could envision my mother looking into her crystal ball, her tanned skin fading to green, and saying, "I'll get you yet, my pretty! You and your little dog, too!" (Nod to her, as that's her favorite movie) :) 

I dragged myself home with the 15,000 pounds (or 1/2 bushel, but who's counting) of tomatoes and stared... Putting up your own food has been a thing of the past, until recently. In recent years, it's been "organic" to grow and store your own food. Not to mention it's a cost saver! Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago. I did it. I actually did it. I made a quick call to mom to verify I had the directions right, then was (literally) up to my elbows in tomatoes. The result?

I had enough tomatoes to can 5 quarts of tomatoes. Being slightly afraid of putting the heinous mash in my mouth, fearing we would all end up dying of Typhoid or something, it took a cold snap and being out of store-bought tomatoes last week for me to drag out a jar. The good news is, we survived and the chili was rockin'. The bad news: I guess I'm gonna be canning more tomatoes. :)

As Momma always said, "never say never" cause you just might live to eat those words... literally! :) Try something new & save on, friends! :)