My mother always was great cook. Of course, she is mostly German,so there are lots of great things to make!  We were never without some kind of Kuchen, coffee cake, or sweet in the house.  Pies – not so much, she had her sister-in-law to bake those. Cakes and breads – yup, if it could be made we had them.  And ate them.

She also was a fan of trying new recipes. When the whole “your church should print a cookbook” thing was popular, she was thrilled.  So many new ideas and tastes to try.  She was also eager to learn from her mother-in-law, who by the way spoke almost no English, and added the Slovak baking to her repertoire.  Carbs, carbs, everywhere carbs…..I tell my Dr. regularly, even without a dead thyroid, I had no chance to be tall and thin… just tall and “you would be shocked to know how much this frame can carry around”!  The females in my family are the definition of “big boned”.  

 

 

     Here are both of my grandmothers…

 

 

 

 

 

 

Being raised in the city, there were limitations.  I never in my life had a fresh canned anything. Or made anything from a garden. Literally, we had a rock garden.  I am not kidding.  That is what is was called. Don’t think canning rocks has any nutritional value. To be fair we had honeysuckle and an awesome azalea bush.  But veggies… not so much.  Canned meant off the shelf at the A&P!

 

So this city girl married a” countryish” boy.  

 

I mean, he lived in the country – not really a farm.  They had a garden, not the rock variety, and pigs and chickens. So, that is a lot more farm than I was ever  exposed to growing up. During our first married summer, he did an internship in Maryland.  We rented a tiny little upstairs apartment from a wonderful, older Mennonite couple.  She had a complete finished basement of quilts. Not machine quilted mind you – hand quilted.  I have NEVER seen anything so beautiful.  The Lehmans… awesome folks.  While there, we were exposed to many farm stands selling fresh produce.  One day we purchased a ton of cucumbers.  I was clueless – but he wasn’t and he said to his bride “lets make pickles”. His bride, wanting to be the consummate wife said “of course”! I mean – how hard could this be?

 

Off to the store we went to buy supplies.  We needed “cans”, I thought they were jars, rings, lids and a “canner” which I thought was a “pot”. Then we cheated, according to my hubby, and purchased Mrs. Wages pickle mix.  Let me just say – this was a rousing success!  The pickles were delicious and I was a country girl!  I knew how to can!!!!

 

Let’s move ahead a bit – we are now married a couple of years, have a young son and we have moved to Indiana and living in our first house – the parsonage. Again, the city girl has made an even deeper foray into the country life.  The hubster is my biggest cheerleader telling me I can be a country girl.  I am not so sure. I mean, what is the deal with burning your trash? And scrapping your leftovers into a bucket?  I am pretty clueless…

 

But I know how to can!  So I resort to what I know.  We have beets.  I have no recollection where they came from – I don’t think we grew them, even though we had a garden.  There were too many of them.  So, I figure the folks from our church shared generously with the Pastor’s family.  I probably said once that I liked beets (and I do – smothered with butter!) so they dropped off several buckets full.

 

 

By now I have fully transitioned to country life and made the big purchase of a PRESSURE COOKER!

I have learned what a pet cock is and I am ready to can these beets and get them in the cellar.  I am further excited that I now live in a house with a full kitchen.  The church folks in anticipation of our arrival have purchased a new stove and put a fresh coat of paint on the walls. Now I have this huge space to spread out my cans in and do all of my prep work. I am beyond excited.

 

 

I get my beets prepared and get them in the cans.  I put them in my pressure cooker and follow all the directions.  I turn on the stove to begin the process of pressure cooking them. And I wait.

 

 

Did I mention that this is the very first time I have used a pressure cooker? Or the very first time I have canned beets? Well…. it was….and the very last time to can beets as well!  

 

Apparently, I didn’t read the directions quite well enough or I didn’t have enough experience using a pressure cooker (now there is a surprise) because within a matter of a few minutes, there was steaming hot water and red fragments of beets ALL OVER THE PLACE!  They were on the stove, on the floor, on the wall and dripping from the ceiling.  The brand new stove and the brand new white paint job were saturated with hot beet concoction!

 

After the screaming and the crying, came the realization that in fact the pressure cooker had blown its pressure “circle”  and we had a “beet volcano natural disaster”!  What a mess!  To be fair, the cooker was used when I got it so who knows how old it was.  At least that is what my DH told me….

 

And all I could think was “hurry up and clean up before someone from the church stops by”!

 

This was not easily accomplished and I think we found beet fragments and stains for a long time after that fateful day. 

 

Needless to say, I have never, and I mean never, canned beets again.  In fact I have only just recently started cooking them again.  Beet trauma takes a long time to wear off!

Over the years, I have successfully learned to can.  In fact, at one point I had a dedicated canning stove.  It was an antique and I loved it.  I cooked in the garage so I didn’t have to heat up the house. I regularly canned pickles, all kinds of tomato products (sauces, ketchup etc), mountains of green beans and more peaches than a family should ever eat.  Then life got crazy, and the city girl kicked back in and the grocery store became my go to for these items.  

 

The garage sale eventually claimed my canning supplies years ago and like many things in life, I wish I had them back.  Maybe when I retire, I will take up canning once again.

 

 However, I don’t believe I will ever try beets again.