Suzy Homemaker

These past few weeks I have been busy canning.  If you remember, last year was my first canning experience and quite frankly, I am hooked. 

Our good friend Roberta gave me a refresher course on how to can chicken and I even did a few batches by myself. 

All in all I canned about 30 lbs. of chicken, 16 jars of beans, and I even tried my hand at canning peaches this year (A totally new experience for my friend Holly and I).   And I think it's safe to say we could definitely do it again....and maybe even try a different fruit to change it up a bit. :)

So now, you can just call me Suzy Homemaker.  HA!

Checked one thing off his to-do list

I think I have mentioned before that the friends we stayed with while looking for a place to live are from Laramie and I knew them when I was growing up. They moved here several years ago and now we live just 15 minutes away.

It has been so great getting to know each other again and re-living childhood memories. Everytime I walk into their house, I see something else that reminds me of when I was little and I say, "I remember this..." I bet it's getting kind of annoying, but it's such a blast.

So anyway, while living with them, we had some great food. Roberta is a great cook and makes a lot of homemade things such as homemade pickles. Not too long after staying with them, Dan informed me that there were a few things that I needed to learn how to do:

1) Make homemade pickles

2) Can (they have really good canned beans and canned chicken. )

Well, I have secretly (or maybe not so secretly) been wanting to learn how to can more things. (I canned my first batch of Jam, with my mother-n-law's help, back in September). So when Roberta asked if I wanted to learn how to can beans (and then later chicken), I was quick to oblige. I actually was ecstatic.

So with the help of Roberta and Annie (Roberta's daughter, who also lives here) I was able to learn. It was so much fun and I think I could maybe, possibly do it on my own next time. It was that easy.

The fruits of our labor. Have you ever seen anything so beautiful?