Thursday, January 28, 2010

In Praise of Pressure Canners

The canner exploded for me today.  Brad and I were downstairs studying in Mom's Sitting Room enjoying a cozy fire when we heard a loud clattering overhead.  My first thought were that the girls were doing something unwise with serious results of a wall falling in or something.  Which proves that my thought processes were not entirely logical.

What we found upon arriving at the scene was a messy kitchen... floor to ceiling. There was glass, broth, and venison remains all over and in places too wonderful to explain.  I reached around keeping my nose away from the top of the pot where there were still five potential bombs and turned off the burner.  The girls showed up about then and in a body we decided that the first thing we needed was shoes on our feet.  The glass everywhere was incredible.

An hour into our cleaning project Elv called me.  I was still on the verge of tears.  He even offered to come home and help!  Wow! So I reassured him that the crisis was quite past; the girls were helping nicely. We were soon going to be back to normal here.

Here's how it happened.  In the first place we couldn't find the seal for the pressure cooker.  We all looked high and low for it.  I'm still convinced that it is down there in the pantry somewhere hiding just beyond our reach and sight.  Why did it become separated from the lid in the first place?!  

I prefer pressuring over boiling any day and today proves my point exactly. Meat has to be thoroughly cooked/canned.  There are two ways to do this: boil your meat filled jars in a water bath for three hours, or use ten pounds of pressure for one and half hours.  Because of the missing seal, I was forced to use the water bath method.

The problem with boiling is that it takes three hours of a rolling boil to ensure a proper job.  In three hours you can boil a lot of water into the air, the levels drop dramatically in the pot and the whole thing has to be watched with an eagle eye.  I failed  the eagle eye end of things today.  I had just checked the pot before going down to study with brad and calculated that this canner would be done in one hour.  It was! At exactly the three hour mark the explosion took place.

Now if I could have used the pressure method I would have gathered my work about me within hearing of the pot and everything would have been perfect.  It would have been over in half the time and the little pressure gauge would have made all the proper sounds for me to know what's what. In about four hours time I would have had 13 cans of venison cooling on my counter.

As it is?  I have 5 jars of canned meat that will take me awhile to clean up once they've cooled.  And I have 6 more jars of raw meat sitting on the counter.  Elv and I have agreed that freezer bags will do nicely in this case, at least until we find the missing seal. 

So that's what is happening at home today.  Moral of the story: Watch your canners and don't lose important things. 

Sunday, January 24, 2010

Sunday Morning Musings


We woke up to snow falling this morning. It's a wet, heavy snow...the kind that cause  half-dead overweighted branches to come crashing down startling us out of our hypnosis watching the stuff falling past our windows.  The few adventurous cars go by with a muffled sloshing.  It's a perfect day for the quiet turning of pages, the crackle of a pine fire in the stove, and gentle snoring. 

In searching through my library for something to read, I came across three little books, a set, by Bruce Wilkinson. The famous or infamous? title, The Prayer of Jabez, was among them, so out of curiosity I decided to see what is in that book. Well, he writes that Jabez's prayer was a three part prayer, but I like the fourth part of the verse, 1 Chronicles 4:10 paraphrased this way: Dear God, don't let me hurt anyone.  It seems to me that while we are praying for increased borders, the presence of God's hand, and safety from evil; that it might be a good idea to remember where others fit into the scope of things.

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Another Thing Happening At Home


We had a grand Christmas vacation and everything was going along smoothly during the holidays until Elv's back "went out". One evening while we eating supper, the back of his chair fell off. UH! he caught himself. He caught everything but that one little vertebrate in his back which seems to have been left behind ever since, because the surrounding muscles have been protesting insistently.

We did the right thing and took him to the "punch doctor", but not until five days later; the chiropractor was on his vacation, too, you know. By then the muscles were in the habit of making themselves known, declining to respond to the "punch" even a little bit.  

Today three weeks later we went to see PA Tom Nigbor in Hayward who recommended that we take Elv back  for another "punch" and prescribed some good pain killers.

It was just a little tiny vertebrate, just a little member, but it is causing great pain. There must be a lesson here somewhere.

What's Happening At Home


We're going through a lot of firewood.  Lance and Brad know how much since they do all the hauling, splitting, and and the boiler fire fixing.  Brad keeps the basket by our sitting room stove full of dry oak and tamarack wood which I really enjoy this winter.  For a fresh new fire I have only to lay in a handful of crumpled paper, crisscross the tamarack over it and light it with a match.  In minutes we have a snapping, crackling fire woofing up the chimney. Thank you, boys, for your hard work. 

In school all three of the children are solving equations at each their own level. "Whatsoever thou doest to one side of the equation; thou must surely do to the other" is the rule these days.  Brad enjoys it the most, and Amy wishes for equations to go away, while poor Frances is like her mother and hopes that she can somehow believe that math really will be consistent as it is purported to be.  

Skating and sledding and snowmobiling are happening, too.  Lance found another functioning snowmobile and "bought it for Frances for her birthday."  You should have seen her smile. No really, he says it Frank's machine, but the truth is he is tired of fixing his own newer, more powerful sled (It spends most of the winter in the shop), and hopes that this one will be more dependable.  It's embarrassing to invite out of state friends to come in winter and two days before they come it ends in the shop, again.


Saturday, January 16, 2010

Time for Flowers

      Take the time to create something beautiful for someone today.  A coffee shop worker in Chiang Mai had time to decorate a simple cup of coffee for Lisl yesterday.

     It's the little flowers we strew in the paths of others that make life livable for both the giver and the receiver of them.    Have a good day.

Thursday, January 14, 2010

One More Happy Thing!

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Happy Things For You

There are plenty of unhappy things in the world to think about...even in our own families, I suppose, if you go looking for them. I am in the mood to concentrate on the delights of life this time.

One of the first of those delights I wish to mention is that Jenny and Gabe come home and spent a whole week with us.

 The children  enjoyed snowmobile play with friends while their mothers did more scrap-booking.

Then these wonderful people came to see us as faithful representatives of Dru and Lisl. They blessed us wonderfully with many assurances of Dru and Lisl being safe (except for that motorbike mode of traveling! and don't protest Dru, they did not overstate the situation at all), happy, and in good hands.

And then there was a ladies day together this week to scrap book again! That was an enriching day for us.

And one more happy thing is this picture of these two little girls. Aren't they beautiful?

Saturday, January 2, 2010

Scrapbooks and a New Year

We are funny creatures. We look forward to a New Year while we scrapbook the memories of last year.This Christmas had a lot of scrap booking in it. One day this week we had Jenny's friends here for the day to work on our scrapbooks. We put up all the tables we have and borrowed another, spreading out all our tools and pictures for serious work.
At lunch time we filled our plates and sat around in the living room and visited while we ate lunch of finger foods. It was a lovely day of sharing ideas, memories, laughter, and opinions. There's something so special about a room full of happy girls and our mutual interests to share.
May we all create treasure-able moments this coming year. Let's realize that God is also "scrap-booking" our lives. What is going into your book?
Jeremiah 29:11-13 For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. And you will seek Me and find me, when you search for Me with all your heart.

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