Preserved

So far this summer my husband has canned fifty quarts of green beans. I have not snapped a single green bean this year. I told him at the beginning of the summer when he was planting the garden that I was not going to snap beans this year. He planted those evil things anyway and so I let him do it all himself.

And I feel no guilt over this.

But maybe…um, I don’t know how else to explain the fact that I spent hours this past weekend peeling and chopping garlic, onions and tomatoes to help Tom can salsa. What else explains my sudden helpfulness but perhaps a bit of residual guilt?



Well, okay, so even if I didn’t necessarily feel guilty over the bean situation, I did feel like Tom deserved a little help with the salsa. After all, I do intend to partake in the bounty of our salsa in the coming year. And salsa is a big job. There are just so many steps, from picking the vegetables from the garden, washing them, peeling them, boiling them and THEN peeling them (I’m looking at you, tomatoes!) After all the prep, you have to boil your jars and simmer your vegetable mix.

So we worked together. And it was good.

Except that Tom didn’t sleep at all Saturday night. Even though I peeled and chopped the onions, the garlic and the tomatoes, he had to stay awake to actually process the salsa. He ended up canning 35 quarts and seven pints of salsa that night.

I appreciate the work he put into it even though I think he’s sort of a glutton for punishment. He chose to do all this the night before we had to drive an hour and a half to a birthday party for his grandson, who turned two on Saturday.

Don’t worry, I drove us to Huntington so Tom could sleep a bit but, unfortunately for him, he seems to have a problem with my driving, in that he fears I won’t drive fast enough if he isn’t awake and watching the speedometer. Whatever.

And of course, since school started last week, we are now suffering from the hottest temperatures to hit so far this summer. We spent the entire summer enjoying temps in the high seventies and very low eighties. For the past week, we’ve had temps in the low nineties with the humidity hovering around ninety-five percent. Ugh!

I’m glad that Sunday evenings are bath nights because after a day at a party for a toddler, both A and O were sweaty messes. But the birthday boy was adorable and in the end, that’s all that counts, right?

Oh, and the fact that Tom was able to