First Batch of Tomatoes

I intended to can peaches today, but the half bushel I bought last night was not ripe enough. Since I had the kitchen all prepared for canning, I decided to do tomatoes. Turned out to be a good choice! I was able to completely fill this basket with ripe tomatoes from the garden, some of which really needed to be dealt with ASAP. The peaches will wait for a couple of days.

This picture didn't quite capture the beautiful colors of the heirloom tomatoes the way I hoped it would. They were so bright and juicy that I found my self smiling throughout the process of chopping them up. What one would think might be a mundane task was really quite enjoyable.

Filling the jars and loading them into the (new!) pressure canner.

Ready to process!

The canner to survive the Apocalypse! (Let's see what kind of Google hits *that* phrase gets me, lol!) It was a little tricky getting the lid screwed on evenly, but after that, it was so easy to use. Good old American-made quality!

The finished product: 7 quarts of heirloom tomatoes canned in their own juice. Should make some yummy chili and spaghetti sauce this winter!

For the curious canners among you, this was a simple raw pack, which is partly why the fruit is floating as much as it is. Not as pretty on the shelf, but oh so easy and probably more nutritious.

Pencil Peril

Quaker blogger and writer Eileen Flanigan has a blog post up that is mostly about finding time to write amid the back-to-school hustle and bustle. But tucked in there is a thought or two about using up old school supplies rather than buying all new ones each and every year. As homeschoolers, there is less pressure on us to get all new things in the fall (and we don't need many folders, etc. as there is no daily transport from one place to another required for most of their paperwork.) Pencils, on the other hand, have become an issue. Ethan (almost 2) has for some time now been fond of biting the erasers off pencils. He doesn't eat them, just bites them off, sucks on them for a few minutes, then spits them onto the carpet. Pink block erasers are strewn about the house but never seem to be handy when we need them, and end-cap erasers are a choking hazard for Ethan, so I've bought more new pencils in the last 9 months than in the previous 9 years! Environmentally unfriendly as it may be, it's actually kind of amusing when we step back and observe ourselves:

"Mommy!! Ethan's got a pencil with an eraser!"

"Quick, trade him for a bitten one!"

"He doesn't want it! I can't get it away from him!"

"Be careful yanking it away; if he lets go, you'll stab yourself in the face."

"But he won't let go! Arrgh! He bit it! Now I can't do my math!"

"Nice try. Just get a new pencil. I sharpened a bunch of them the other day."

Someday when Ethan gets older, he's going to wonder why we have 100 pencils in the house but NONE with an eraser. We can't wait to tell him...