The Kitchen &The Garden Patch

My wonderful mother sent me out a surprise box of homemade canned goodies last week. 

From left to right: Apple Butter, Applesauce, Pickles, Tomato Sauce, and Strawberry Jam

It brought back memories of sitting around the kitchen with my family, preparing all kinds of fruits and vegetables for canning purposes. My mom would be washing and boiling the jars and lids, and preparing the spices; always taking reference from recipes handwritten in pencil on aging pieces of paper that throughout the years had seen a fair amount of unintentional spills and stains.

Us kids would be sitting in a row at the counter, helping my dad peel and cut the fruits and vegetables from our garden. He would hand us slices of freshly harvested produce to eat, and insist that we must try it, because it was indeed the most delicious fruit/vegetable he had ever eaten.

At the time I didn’t appreciate the experience and joy of growing, harvesting, and preserving homegrown produce. And now I treasure each one of these jars. I almost don’t want to open them, for fear of never having them again. Silly, right? 

I’m looking forward to the day when I have my own garden and I can pass these skills and experiences onto someone else.