Finished Baby Bright Baby Blanket

I finished making what I'm calling "Baby Bright Baby Blanket." I was originally going to go around with another set of squares but this one turned out to be a nice size for a baby.

I used some DK yarn from my stash and some baby yarns that I bought to make this. I need to do a quick wash on delicate and a light blocking and it will be done 100%.

I used 3 styles of squares--traditional granny squares, closed/solid granny squares and one style that is a combination of both that you can see in the center.

It's pretty nice here but we're in for a heat wave next week again. I've been canning and freezing some foods lately. The other day the big pot of tomato sauce cooked down and yielded 3 pints and 3 quarts so a total of a gallon and a quart. The quart sized containers are a nice size to make spaghetti for dh and me.

Today I have some broccoli to freeze. Tonight I'll be working on 2 projects--a pair of baby booties and weaving the ends in on an afghan I made.

Hope y'all are having a nice weekend and later gator!

Jewelry Clearance

Corn, Clean as a Whistle

 A friend sent this to me some time ago and I kept meaning to post it here but, I forgot about it. When I was going through some of the saved emails I had been keeping for some reason or the other I found it. For those of you who like to can or freeze corn, removing the silks can be a difficult chore. The gentleman in this video shows you an easy to do method of accomplishing it. Y'all have a wonderful holiday season!

If the blog is playing music, just go to the column on your right and scroll down to the music player and mute it. 

I Started Canning

Yesterday, I started canning my green beans. I had enough beans to can 9 pints. I got a pressure canner this year. The USDA recommends that you can with a pressure canner because it is the only way to get temperatures high enough to kill bacteria spores. I have some packs of veggies left from last year and I plan to divide them up among my 2 sons so they don't go to waste. Last year, I froze vegetables. After having a 5+ day power outage last winter I started thinking how lucky I was that the freezer was in the garage and that the outage was in the winter and not the summer. Concerns over a summer-time power outage was the deciding factor in purchasing a pressure canner. Here's a picture of my jars of beans.

08-03-2008--Preserving Vegetables from Garden

Hi, I thought that I would share with you today one of the things I'm doing to conserve on my food bill for this winter. We grew our first garden this year! It's pretty small because we didn't know if we had what it takes to maintain one. Next year it will be bigger! Anyway, we are up to our ears in cucumbers and I've been giving many of them away. My best crop is the green beans. Every Saturday for the past few weeks I go and harvest my little crop then I bring the beans in and process them for freezing. I was able to get one of those whatchacallit machines at Big Lots that vacuum packs food items. So, for the past several weekends I've been able to put 2-7 packs of beans in the freezer. It's just dh and me so that will go a long way. Anyway, I've been scouring the Internet looking for a basic tomato sauce recipe and I found on at a New Mexico State University web page http://cahe.nmsu.edu/pubs/_e/. I only have a few tomato plants because I don't care for tomatos but I do enjoy dishes that have tomato sauce in them. The recipe sounds like a lot of work but it's worth it when you look at how high food prices are now and financial experts predict even higher prices this winter. Here's a few more places to visit for tips on freezing and canning food

• http://cahe.nmsu.edu/pubs/_e/


• http://www.canning-food-recipes.com/canning.htm


• http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/TOPIC_Canning_Food


• http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/


• http://www.pickyourown.org/allaboutcanning.htm

I have some onions coming in and I want to chop them up and dehydrate them to use in cooking. I would like to buy a couple bushels of corn to process and freeze but the going price at farmers' markets is $40 a bushel! Between the summer storms, higher transportation costs and the increased use of corn to make ethanol corn prices have soared! Anyway, if anyone has some more hints, recipes or comments please write me.

For more information, go to your favorite search engine and type in "preserving foods," "canning foods" or "freezing foods." Good luck and have fun!

Take care...Sharon