Canning Spicy Tomato Juice & Jalapeños

It's been a while since I've introduced a new category to my blog, and I hope this one ends up with lots of posts eventually! This week, I canned spicy tomato juice. It's a recipe I've had for a while (and I actually managed to track down via the Taste of Home website - spicy tomato juice recipe) and I'm sure I clipped it because it gives instructions on freezing it. I've been afraid of canning for a long time (something about sending your whole family to the hospital does that to a girl) but I really want to conquer it!

There are still quite a few tomatoes in my freezer from last year (I'll have to share with you how I freeze tomatoes!) so I tried using about half frozen and half fresh. I ended up making about half again the recipe, although I ended up with about double the yield. I also didn't pay strict attention to the amounts, just put in about what I thought it should be and had Hubs taste test it when it was done. (YOU tell ME how many tiny onions make up "three medium onions" worth - plus half again, to boot!)

I will use about two quarts of this when I make chili (mmmMMM, can't wait until I make it so I can share that recipe with you!) and I also canned several smaller jars as Hubs enjoys it in a red beer every now and then.

Surely you know I couldn't do this without an "incident" right? Since tomatoes are so acidic, I went with my dad's advice that I didn't need to put them in a water bath to can them. So I washed the jars in HOT soapy water (using rubber gloves - it was that hot), and rinsed them in HOT water, then filled them with HOT juice, then put HOT lids on them and screwed on the rings. Then I started clicking around to some friends' sites, and got nervous.

I ended up removing the lids, using new (boiled) lids, and processing them in a water bath. (EDIT: I now am adding lemon juice to each jar, and I've also read that juice should be processed in a pressure canner. Good grief this stuff is complicated, isn't it???) Since I had a bit of extra space, I also made some pickled jalapeños since Hubs likes them.

Like everyone's kitchen, mine HEATS UP when canning . . . some things that I did to try and keep it cool included:
* setting a fan in the doorway to blow cool air in (while Goose was napping, of course).
* dumping my hot water as soon as I was done with it (I would also recommend taking it outside to cool and then using it on your garden).
* taking my jars from the water bath into the bathroom to cool - I lined the tub with a towel and set them in there. I also put the pot in there until it cooled down.

I also wasn't quite sure where to store my newly canned treasures. Away from heat and light is recommended . . . so I put them under the bed in the spare room! It's close enough to the kitchen that they won't be hard to grab when I need them.

If you're new to canning, I highly recommend Laura at Heavenly Homemaker's Canning 101, and you may remember that Lori at A Frugally Old Fashioned Homemaker put together a great post on Helpful Canning Information.

Link Roundup - Papa Airplane! Edition

We took Goose to breakfast at a fly-in this morning. (A fly-in is when a bunch of pilots fly to a designated airport and show off their planes, basically. Sometimes the bigger ones might have an air show or some such, but this one was quite low-key.) Goose ate her pancake, and eyed the kitties running around the building. When she was done, I thought she might want to go pet them, but she was ready to look at planes! Or so I thought. Turns out, I think, she was ready to go flying! Unfortunately Papa didn't bring his airplane . . . I'm thinking the two of them are going to need to take to the sky before long!

Lots of great links this week -

MAKE
I'm a big whiny weenie when it comes to heat, which is why I've been so cheerful lately with the cooler temps. What, haven't you noticed? :>) I'm making note of this post on DIY Neck Coolers at Salihan Crafts - I've seen these here and there but this one jumped out at me and said "why don't you make one?!?" Need to find those crystals first . . .

Not sure that I'm quite ready to make the step, but Katie at Kitchen Stewardship posted on Effective Homemade Deodorant that is very intriguing.

Hopefully no one ever needs to know this, but I really liked this post on How to Make a Designer Hospital Gown. I bet these are real day brighteners!

As you know, I'm a geek for bubbles, and I love this Bigger Better Bubbles Homemade Wand at The Adventure of Motherhood.

EAT (I must have been hungry while surfing this week - lots of recipes to try!)
Amy at Finer Things posted on Blueberry Overnight Coffee Cake and a recipe from Crystal (of Biblical Womanhood and Money Saving Mom fame) for Lazy Granola.

Sarah at Sarah's Musings posted on Calabacitas and Whole Wheat Graham Crackers. (In Spanish, calabaza is squash or pumpkin . . . and I'm reminded of a silly little rhyme we used to say when I was studying in Mexico. It isn't very funny when translated, but thanks, Sarah, for the reminder of that little memory!)

Skip to My Lou has a post on Making Strawberry Fruit Leather with a link to an apricot version.

That reminds me that Laura at Heavenly Homemakers posted last year on Homemade Fruit Leather - also not in a dehydrator! She made apple and peach. MMMM!

Similarly, Tipnut has a post on Drying Apples without a dehydrator, no less. I think I'd need a cooler day, but wouldn't that smell amazing?!?

LEARN
I was intrigued by this post on How to Make a Decision Like Ben Franklin at The Art of Manliness (with a heads up from Trent at the Simple Dollar). As a math geek and lover of all things complicated, I've actually done something similar a few times.

Amy at Finer Things wrote a great post on being The Entertainer (or not) as part of her "Mommy, Come Home" series. I'm pleased to say that Goose spends most of her time playing by herself, though I would like to pull together more of the activities that I post about here :>) for us to do together.

Lori at A Frugally Old Fashioned Homemaker posted on putting up corn, and in response to my question, she then posted on the brush she uses to Silk Corn. We have been just accepting those wayward pieces of silk in our corn . . . perhaps next year will be silk-free! Thanks, Lori!

I really enjoyed this post at Conversion Diary on "I Want To Homeschool But I'm Afraid", and the best part is the comments and links there. I'm really excited to give honest-to-goodness homeschooling a try in a few years.

DO
Along those lines, I enjoyed these posts on back-to-school traditions - Plum Pudding did a scavenger hunt and Once Upon A Holiday made a Schultute, which is actually a first-year-of-school thing. Hubs and I both have some German in our ancestry, so this works in well!

WATCH
Here is a YouTube video on Pope John Paul II that shows his extraordinary connection with children. I cried while watching it and I realized again how much a person can love someone they've never met . . . and I miss him so much. Sounds odd, I suppose, considering I never met him. He was a truly great man.

Today's Treasures

I visited our thrift store today, for the first time since before we left on vacation. I'd been hitting it pretty hard right up until we left, looking for things to keep Goose occupied in the car. (Note: I updated with more pics and how things worked for us!) Today I was able to relax and browse a bit since I had a bit of time between working and heading home to pick Goose up for lunch. For $2, this is what I found:

Four games for ten cents each. We already have Scrabble, but I wanted to get an extra one to make necklaces! (You can read about my silhouette pendant making, and Make and Takes has the initial Scrabble tile pendant tutorial that got me thinking about it. Chasing Cheerios also put a new spin on Scrabble tile pendants.)

Sorry is an old favorite, Hurry Up is a new one I'd never seen before (it's kind of a marble maze, I think), and you fellow 80s kiddos may recognize ol' Simon. :>)


Here's the rest of the fun stuff! I picked up a copy of the OLD Cheaper by the Dozen, which my mom read to us a chapter at a time spread over several bedtimes - I can't bring myself to watch the Steve Martin movie. I'm sure it's nice, but it just isn't the same. Ahem. I also picked up a copy of Sewing With Scraps (which may end up as a give-away . . . ) and a coloring book for Goose.

I also found a small toy iron, which I think is similar to one I had as a wee lass (is that right, Mom? Did I have an ironing board, too? I need to dig around your basement . . . just as soon as I have an actual toy room to put it all in!) and a small sieve that she can use if we ever get her a sandbox. I also picked up some floral foam, a small packaged kit to make five cloth-covered buttons, some chenille stems (that I will forever refer to as pipe cleaners), three wooden clothes pegs for organizing ribbon scraps, a package of small wooden beads, a magnifying glass, and a package of wooden rings.

I need to dig around a bit more as I thought I had posted about a game I made for my nieces that used a wooden ring, but I sure can't find it. Maybe that'll be next week's Frugal Friday post - it was cheap and easy! (and hopefully fun!) Anyway. My total was actually only $1.75 but they don't make change so I rounded up. Not too shabby, eh? I've already told Hubs that IT IS ON - we'll be playing some Simon tonight!

Bangle Bracelets

God surely has a sense of humor. My sweet cow farmer of a husband has two very lovely, trendy sisters. Now, I may have been raised a "city girl" (if you can call a town of 5,000 souls a "city"), but I have completely adapted to the rural life where a normal day means you see cows, cats, chickens, and an occasional neighbor drive by. I would hardly know a trend if it knocked on the door and invited itself for dinner.

So, when it comes to coming up with gifts for these lovely girls, I turn to one million of my closest crafty "friends" on the internet for guidance. Whenever I see something that I can make for them without a lot of expensive purchased inputs - but into which I can pour a lot of love - I bookmark it! (And I now pass all these ideas on to you, in my reading the whole internet posts.)

One such idea that I found last year turned into Christmas presents for my trendy sisters - One Pearl Button's decoupaged bangle bracelets. The instructions are easy enough for ME to follow, and the results were pretty good, I thought! (Photo is my sister-in-law who happened to be wearing one of her bracelets on the same day I posted this!)

Basically, you tear pages from a magazine or catalog and use Mod Podge to stick them on a wooden bracelet "blank". This was my first time with Mod Podge and I really got into it. I also sprayed them with an acrylic sealant so hopefully they wouldn't feel tacky. I enjoyed picking colors that I thought reflected their personalities and mixing and matching them so they'd flow well together.

I recently came across a similar version for the younger set at Whipup. I haven't made any yet, but perhaps Goose needs a couple so she can dress up like her aunties? I don't know - what's the old saying about how do you keep them down on the farm once they've seen the light of the city? Nah . . . I have a feeling Goose's favorite thing will always be tractor rides with papa so hopefully we're safe. :>)

Also, I'm soliciting advice on a vacuum sealer and a dehydrator to preserve our garden goodness . . . I'd love it if you Frugal Friday folk would head over to that post and share any knowledge you have!

And for more frugal ideas, visit Life as Mom.

Any Atari Geeks Out There?

I have been reminiscing a bit lately, remembering all kinds of "this time last year, Goose was [insert action here]" - such as learning how to walk around the 4th of July. (She was a late walker.) About this time last year, I was comparing our life to the Atari game of Adventure. (Link takes you to Wikipedia.)

[Or better yet, click here to play! Though it's a bit tougher using the arrow keys instead of a joystick and I just figured out how to drop something without picking something else up: use the spacebar. Man, I could waste a ton of time there. We didn't need no stinkin' fancy graphics when I was a kid!]

Anyway. Where I actually was going with this - and it isn't necessarily going to make sense unless you have played the game a lot - is that having a newly walking toddler was kind of like having the bat in our house. I'd leave something somewhere, and when I went back for it, it would be gone. Something new might be in its place. And that thing would be somewhere else, and whatever was there would be gone.

I'm hoping *somebody* out there can relate having played Adventure in their glory days - because this comparison really cracks me up. And now I'm off to play Adventure again, and maybe lean on Hubs to hook up our old Atari . . .

Help! Need a New Vacuum Sealer & Dehydrator

My parents are so generous to us; a few years ago, this manifested itself in a vacuum sealer. I didn't realize what a treasure it was until last year when I used it to vacuum seal some of our garden bounty. I loved it - but I found a problem right away. I didn't dry the green beans after blanching them, and some of the water seems to have gotten sucked into the motor and this year, it doesn't work at all. I'm REALLY disappointed, to say the least! But I have a couple of gift cards that I have tucked away for this purpose, so now I'd love to get your input!

If you have a vacuum sealer, what brand is it? What do you love about it? What do you not like about it? Is there something it doesn't do that you wish it did?

You can see Tammy's posts on vacuum sealing here:
Vacuum-Sealed Foods
Food Saving Without a Food Saver
Meatballs In Bulk, For the Freezer
Input Requested, Frozen Meal Ideas
Making and Freezing Pepperoni

And, while I have you here, do you have a food dehydrator? Same questions - what brand, what do you love and not like?

Tammy's posts on dehydrating can be found here:
Food Dehydrators
Preserving Food - What Do I Do?
Dehydrated Pears
Dehydrating Bananas
Banana Blessings
Onions, Onions, Onions
Cheaper Baked Beans

(Some of the mentions are in the comments.)

Other blogs I love that have sections on preserving: Bethany's section on Canning and Preserving and Kim's Sections on Canning and Dehydrating, Lori's canning, Sarah's Lacto-Fermentation Series, and it takes a bit more digging, go look at Laura's blog. (How about a canning catagory, Laura?!?) :>)

I'm anxious to read what you have to say!

Link Roundup, Meatloaf on the Grill Edition

I tried a new meatloaf recipe last night but did NOT want to run the oven for two hours. So, I put it on the grill. I made a small pan out of heavy duty foil, and put the shaped loaf in it, then slid a cookie sheet under the foil to take it out to the grill. Once I had it positioned, I made sure the edges of my foil pan were all standing up and added the water. I grilled it on medium-low for about an hour and a half to an hour and forty-five minutes. I also made grilled potatoes on the other side (and then used leftover potatoes in breakfast burritos this morning and leftover meatloaf in sandwiches at lunch).

So. Links! This is sort of two weeks worth, so hang on to your hats -

MAKE
Valerie posted about a fun modern art project her daughter did - very cute!

Here is a fun easy handmade bubble blower at Chasing Cheerios made out of straws. Possibly the best part is the comment that a few pin pricks mean you can blow out to make bubbles but not suck in any yucky stuff (bleah!).

Along those lines, Monkey Lobster has directions on making giant bubbles with a homemade wand.

Calamity Kim (great blog name!) has a post on How to Make Chiffon Flowers. I love the imperfections of them!

Martha Stewart has some downloadable doily patterns that are shown printed on labels and stuck on tins. My recommendation? Pair that with the repurposed tins that you cover with scrapbook paper yourself. Oh, and I wouldn't spend money on full-page labels, either . . . I'd print on regular paper and cut it out, then use Mod Podge or other glue to stick it to the tin. Or a at a minimum, I'd try to make stickers out of the leftover part of the label!

I was highly amused by these fish in a bag soaps at Peak Candle Supplies.

I'm intrigued by the method these custom wooden nickels are made. (at Just Something I Made)

Here's another water bottle tote, at The Long Thread this time. I like the elastic at the top to keep the bottle in. Now I just need a decent water bottle . . .

My sister-in-law Rach sent me a link for this Recycled Wine Bottle Torch. When I look at our life, I'm a bit taken aback by how little time Goose and I seem to spend outside some days. I really dislike mosquitoes (and their bites, and things like West Nile Virus), and I also really dislike coating myself and my kid in bug spray chemicals, and I further dislike having to try to scrub off said chemicals once we come inside. We talked to some friends recently about their bug control methods, which include a mosquito magnet placed at the edge of their farmyard and twice weekly spraying, but then I wonder 1) about the effectiveness of spray when it's OUTSIDE and then 2) if it hangs around, then your kid is picking that up while playing in the grass. No winners here. Anyway, the torch is way cool. :>)

DO
Valerie also has some great Laundry Day Fun ideas at Frugal Family Fun Blog. I don't have too hard of a time getting laundry done, though Goose sometimes "helps" me by putting things in or taking them out . . . one. at. a. time. But, in a number of years hopefully I'll have her doing laundry on her own, so I'm trying to think of the payoff down the road.

Here is an amazing post on a Dr. Seuss baby shower at Kara's Party Ideas that is crazy cute and well-thought out! I'm thinking it was likely pretty pricey, though. I think, though, that there are ideas that can be borrowed from it to pull off something of similar "ooh" factor for less cash . . .

Whisker Graphics has a very cute printable for a 5 Good Things Booklet. It was created as a way of looking at the positive in each day, and the booklet holds a week's worth of good things. (And I love the design!)

EAT
Tipnut has posts linking recipes for pizza sauce and pizza dough. I have collected a bazillion recipes for both and have yet to find one that doesn't make me go "meh". It's really a personal thing, I think.

LEARN
I beg your pardon for interjecting a quite serious note. I came across a link to Regina Doman's 20 Things You Can Do For Those Who Are Grieving. Regina wrote it after her son Joshua was killed in a tragic accident. It is recirculating after Mary Ellen Barrett's son drowned last week. It has reminded me to pray for all who have lost a child at any stage of life, from the womb on up. I can't imagine the hole it leaves in a parent's heart.

I think a lot about how God uses suffering to draw us closer to Him. Karen Edmiston has a knack for saying things better than I can, and quoting the good ones. In Keeping Company with Karen, an interview at just another day of Catholic pondering, she notes:

C.S. Lewis once said that “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”

(Now go read the rest for the context!)

Trent at the Simple Dollar wrote a great post on dorm clutter: what you actually need for college that I should have had 15 years ago (yikes!). Actually, this could apply toward pretty much most of life - I know I have way WAY more stuff than I really need.

Scroll down about half way in Melissa Wiley's Scribbles and Bits post for some really great links on watercolors. Very interesting . . . and a long way, I'm sure, from the watercolors of my childhood.

Melissa Wiley also provided a link to this post on making Ivory soap souffle in the microwave. We'll have to wait a few years for Goose to appreciate it, but it sure looks fun!

It's been a while since I've linked to Jen at Conversion Diary, but her post on Stopping to Smell the Roses: a Practical Guide really struck me this week. What it said to me was that if I want to fit in more, I need to do less, though that isn't really what she says. Oh, heck, just go read it for yourself. :>)

My knitting skills are still in the very preliminary learning stages. So when I saw a tip on using a crochet hook to pick up dropped stitches, I was intrigued. Interestingly, it came in a post at Girl on the Rocks in a tutorial on making a keychain crochet hook. Man, I love the internet. How random is that?

We won't be going this year, but I have Hubs locked in to taking Goose and me to the 2010 Nebraska State Fair since it's moving closer to where we live. Trent at the Simple Dollar wrote a post last year on A Frugal Guide to the State Fair with lots of great tips on how to get the most out of it.

Speaking of Trent at the Simple Dollar, he also has a post on I'll Do It Tomorrow (basically lack of motivation). I need to revisit this on a regular basis . . .

Copyblogger wrote about 5 Common Grammar Mistakes that I read with interest. I'm a bit of a grammar lover, but I know I make big mistakes sometimes - especially when I'm in a hurry! (So if you ever catch a mistake on my posts . . . feel free to gently let me know! :>)) I have to admit the one I notice the most is when people use an apostrophe when the word is actually plural. (i.e. The cat's are in the barn. Should be "cats".) (My apologies for friends who I've mentioned this to . . . it's a compulsion, really.)

And finally, this one is for Lori who recently got curious about cooking habits: Trent at the Simple Dollar wrote about the lessons he learned after embarking on an adventure of making (and making suggestions to remake) a number of recipes from NPR's How Low Can You Go series. (visit the post for a whole bunch of links and some interesting sounding recipes - plus Trent's comments) Trent is considering a food blog and I hope he does it!

Whew - next week should be better since I won't have two weeks of posts.

Giveaway Winners!

Zoiks, how could I go through my entire day - proofreading at my day job, lunch at my MIL's, mowing the lawn, making meatloaf for supper on the grill - and not announce the giveaway winners?!? Let's get down to it! Winners are:

Sarah! She chose a pair of baby leg warmers, and she'll get the Patchwork book, too.

Vanessa! She will get the taggie blanket.

Amy! She'll get the bathtub fishing game.

Shaye! She's getting the crochet book AND a pair of leg warmers.

FrugalFarmFamily! She didn't pick anything :>) so she's going to get the holiday and Christmas books and the Heloise book. (It'll save me on postage!)

Hélène! (who also food blogs here - yum!) She'll get the giraffe baby leg warmers.

Rachel! She gets the tins.

Valerie! She gets the fairy wings.

Zimms Zoo! She chose sock monkey baby leg warmers.

Connie! She chose a pair of Christmas baby leg warmers.

Heather! She'll get the Breastfeeding book and a pair of baby leg warmers.

Angela! She gets a pair of pig baby leg warmers.

You may notice a theme . . . I'm looking at the enormous pile of baby leg warmers I have and I'd rather they be on some chubby little legs than waiting in boxes. So, I went with a nice even dozen winners. I e-mailed or contacted through your blog each of you (I think!) so please get back to me with your shipping address and I'll get your loot sent out.

Thanks to all for participating, and as I said, I have several fun things set aside for giveaways, so I'll have to do a few more . . . just let me save my nickles for postage!

Bathtub Fishing Game

Back on this reading the whole internet post, I highlighted this post on foam bath toys. I took it one step further and made it into a fishing game! (I have also put some in my Etsy shop)

To find the patterns, I did Swagbucks searches for coloring pages with reasonably simple outlines. I used Microsoft Word to resize the images so they'd be approximately the same size (4" or so, to be easily handled by a toddler). I then traced them onto pieces of 2mm to 3mm craft foam sheets and cut them out.

I wasn't exactly sure how to go about making the net. I found a couple of plastic embroidery hoops at the thrift store and a piece of netting that I think is tulle. I pulled the tulle through to about what I thought would be a good amount of net - enough to actually catch the fish but not so much as to make the fish difficult to retrieve from the net. I folded the extra tulle back over the hoop to provide more layers to hopefully make it stronger and then stitched around by hand through all the layers. It works!

As noted in the linked post above, I saved the extra pieces from cutting out the foam forms. I cut them down into reasonable sized chunks and punched holes in them for Goose to string on a shoelace as a necklace. I actually went one step further, and saved the hole punches as well as the trimmings that were too small for necklace pieces and once Goose is a bit older, we'll use them to make a collage, I think.

For more frugal ideas, visit Life As Mom.

Vacation Pics

So Goose is snoozing her way toward hour 3 of her first nap back in her crib, and I'm just now getting to this post. I've spent more time than I probably should have trying to knock down the numbers in my Reader (and I tried to spend some time each day keeping it below double digits!) so we'll see if I can get this done and published. Not that anybody was worried, but I have a number of posts bookmarked for this week's reading the whole internet post! Anyway, as we say in our house - ready, set, go!

This is Goose and me enjoying some ice cream at one of the stops in Yellowstone. At the last minute, I tossed in her favorite winter hat and I was glad that I did - not only did it help keep her warm, but she was so glad to see it. You can see her faithful favorite animals made the trip, too.

Here we are on the huge teddy bear sofa at the wolf and bear center. This and the playground there were the most exciting things . . .

Goose is talking to my mom here as we waited for Old Faithful. She saw the steam and told my mom "hot!" You can also see the necklace she made out of a shoelace and small empty thread spools. She wore it a lot. :>)

Hubs and Goose are checking out the Wind River behind our motel in Dubois, Wyoming. It was really pretty! We had a great room there, too - half the price of the one in Big Sky and every bit as accommodating.

Here are wagon ruts along the Oregon Trail near Gurnsey, Wyoming. Looking at them, I felt so . . . SOFT compared to those pioneer women. Could you imagine riding in a wagon all that way? With all your worldly possessions, many of which were abandoned along the way to lighten the load for the animals? Mercy. We also visited Independence Rock and Register Cliff, two places where pioneers carved their names (similar to Chimney Rock here in Nebraska). It was interesting to see how the scratchings had eroded - I'm sure the inscribers thought it would be there forever.

We were all pretty glad to sleep in our own beds last night. In fact, by early evening, Goose was saying "bedtime!" and asking to be put in her crib so she could play in the familiar surroundings. She went to sleep pretty quickly once it was actually bedtime, and slept nice and late, too. (So did her mama!) I need to upload a few more pictures to my post on keeping toddlers occupied in the car and provide a bit of feedback on how things went. Overall, Goose was an amazing traveler and did quite well . . . though there were a few times when I wished we'd have brought my parents' TV/VCR with a few of their beloved Care Bear tapes!

Thankfully I got this banged out before Goose woke up, so I'd better do a bit more unpacking. It's amazing what a wreck the house can turn into! See you tomorrow with a Frugal Friday post -