When Things Go Wrong

   My days are filled with chores that come with living on the Bayou.  This time of year often finds me in the kitchen doing a lot of home-canning.  Vegetables and fruits from the garden, backyard fruit trees and a local "pick-your-own" market are all safely canned and the shelves restocked for the coming year.  This is not only as a method of having a ready resource of food in case of a hurricane but, also, because I am one that absolutely hates shopping.  I would much rather do a bit of work here than spend any time at all in a store.

  That home-canning was in full swing for the past few days.  Not only did I "put up" a bunch of stuff for us, I canned green beans for my daughter and son-in-law.  They do not have the time nor a pressure canner so I volunteered to do the bushel of beans for them.  Mark had gone to the farmers' market and came home with a truckload of goodies...beans included.  The process was going well with the first two canner's full.  Then...the mishap.  Even though Son carefully checked each jar, one must have had a tiny, hairline crack.  When the pressure canner was doing its thing, that hairline crack became a bottomless jar.  Once the processing and decompressing time was complete, I opened the canner to find beans floating around the other jars!  It was saddening to see those lovely beans ruined.  At least, the other jars in the canner were intact!  All in all, the kids now have twenty quarts of beans to stock their pantry.

  This is the second time a mishap of this sort has happened recently.  A couple of years ago, a jar exploded in the canner.  That jar was an older one that had been given (full) to friends.  When they returned it, the jar had apparently been treated a bit rough.  The breakage was a given. The one yesterday, however, was a brand new jar.  I have noticed that the jars nowadays are thinner walled and are much easier cracked.  Many come from the store in bad condition.  The canning lids are the same way.  Folks, if you do home-canning, check the jars carefully (even new ones) and inspect the lids for dents and scratches.  It is a shame but that is how it is.  Just be careful!  

  Still, the beans are canned, jams and jellies are made, peas and butterbeans are all frozen and I am a happy camper!  Now that the pantry shelves are all filled again, I can breathe easy!

Just Don't...Ok?

  I have no problem sharing.  If you are in need, I will gladly give whatever I have.  If you are nice to me, I will be nice to you.  Simple as that.  However, I do have one pet peeve related to this.  If I loan you something, do not return it broken.  As a kid, I was always taught that it was in poor taste to ever return something is worse condition than it was borrowed.  Either "repair it or replace it" was something Pop drilled into my head.  And what every you do, NEVER, EVER try to slip it past as if nothing happened in the first place.  No problem...or, at least, there should be none.

  While what I am about to relate has nothing actually to do with borrowing but more with giving, it is still pertinent.  I share a good bit of my home-canned goods with folks.  Usually, this is done with the request "Save the jar!" as canning jars can be quite expensive when you use as many as I do.  That said, I would hope that folks understand that a broken jar is not the same thing as a "saved" jar.  Today's canning experience could have been quite tragic had I not been in the right spot at the right time.  For those not familiar with the process, the jars must be sterilized prior to filling.  Since I do not have a dishwasher, I do it the old-fashioned way...in a pot of boiling water.  Always have...always will.  It was while the jars were sterilizing that I heard a weird "plink".  My heart sank,  I knew that sound.  It had happened one time before years ago.  Sure enough several of the jars had chunks missing out of the rim.  The whole kit and caboodle had to be restarted from the get go.  It was a blessing that I heard the strange sound.

 These jars had recently been returned by someone who was gifted jams and jellies.  Although I checked for cracks and chips while washing the jars, hairline fractures are nearly impossible to see.  It took that hot water to make those fractures into full blown chips and cracks. One broken jar would have been bad but, out of 20 jars, 14 were unusable.  Dozens of glass shards were in the pot!  Just imagine what could have happened!  Lord, have mercy!!!

  This bit of breakage was caused by one thing and one thing only.  Too many folks think it is a wise move to use the back of a knife to tap open a tight jar lid.  Just don't...ok??  That is one of the stupidest moves anyone can make!  Not only are you ruining the jar, you take a huge chance of getting glass shards in the food!  Duh!  Stupid!  Dangerous!!  Just don't.  In this case, the returned metal rims proved that the knife-whacking technique had been employed.  Was this person not strong enough to loosen a jar rim that I put on myself?  I hope this is not the case.  These jars had been gifted to a young man!  I am an old lady!  If anyone cannot loosen something that I tighten, he sure better hit the gym!  I am not that strong!  So...moral of this story???  Get a grip!  Use the duck tape method.  Use the rubber band method.  Don't use the knife-whack method!  Just don't...ok??  

Standing the test of time.

  While excavating the area for the Bog Garden, Son has been uncovering a lot of "treasures" and a lot of "non-treasures" (also known as junk).  When Hurricane Katrina pushed through here years ago, she picked up tons of sand from the beach front miles to our south.  All of that lovely sand was deposited in places like our yard.  This was fine by me as I would much rather have mounds of sand than washed out ruts. In places, the sand was piled up higher than six feet.  Now, years and years later, the sand has leveled to become part of the landscape.  One particularly deep area is where Michael decided the Bog Garden should be so he is digging through not only sand but lots of stuff!

  We were tickled to see just how many plastic yard ornaments were under the sand.  Dozens of three foot tall red and white candy canes were pulled from the area.  These were considered junk and tossed on the trash pile to be hauled to the dump.  Thousands of shards of stained glass were also found and painstakingly collected to be recycled as art pieces.  Stained glass work has always held me spellbound and I can hardly wait to begin creating with these hurricane shards.  Then he found a treasure.....a true treasure.

  A crazy as it may sound, he found a glass canning jar with a zinc lid still intact.  It amazed us that the lid had held tight all of these years underground.  The fun part was that the jar still contained whatever was preserved inside from years ago. Granted the stuff had become a gelatinous, brown liquidy mess but it was still tightly bound inside the jar.  Not being one to waste a perfectly good canning jar (hmmm?), I unsealed the jar to find a substance that was not at all what I expected. I figured that whatever that stuff was, it had to be quite smelly by this time.  It was not.  It smelled highly of blackberry jam!  (No, I did not eat it!)  

  After a bit of scrubbing, the jar and lid came incredibly clean and will soon become a container for buttons or beads in the craft room.  "Waste not, want not."  comes to mind.  I figure if the jar withstood a hurricane of Katrina's strength and then ten years buried in salty sand, it has a story to tell and should be added to the collection of weird and wonderful things housed within the Little Bayou House.