Learning to can

I'm trying to teach myself how to "can' things. I want to be able to preserve our applesauce for more than a few days, can fruit so that we can have "fresher" stock during the winter, and also just to have one more domestication skill under my belt to pass on to my kids. One of Jazmin's nurses gave me all her old jars and seals, which was a huge step in the right direction. I spent the majority of this evening sealing them off with saran wrap after they got sanitized by the dishwasher (a little trick my mother in law does). I can't wait to fill them all up with peaches, pears, beans, tomato soup, applesauce, etc! Hopefully next year I'll have a more "plentiful garden" and will have more of my own produce to use throughout the following year.

Also,I'm admitting that I'm a bad mom, I gave my 5 1/2 mo old a sucker to play with and chew on while I was finishing up sealing off the jars. She loved it, I hated that she had it, but knew the task at hand wouldn't get completed if I didn't do it. Sometimes, you just have to compromise.