Never too old to learn

I am 75 years old, married for 52 years and have canned since I got married. You would think I would have a grip on the best way to do this but… no… I only learned today. Canning tomatoes has always been a pleasure but it was quite a long process. Today I had an 8 kg bucket heaped full of tomatoes that Cliff picked in the morning. Normally I would can that as juice to use in all kinds of recipes. That means cutting up the tomatoes after taking out the stem part then cooking them until they are soft. After that I used to pass them through a food mill to get the skins out, fill jars and can. Today I decided to just can the whole tomatoes but first I had to get the skins off. Pretty easy to do if you know how. It took me 1 1/2 hours from start to having the jars in the canner. Amazing. Most of you probably knew how to do it but I only knew how to the hard way and now I am a really happy camper.
I was not too happy awhile ago because I lost a lot of my hearing back in July and it has not gotten better at all. I had an audiogram done and I might need a hearing aid. So far I am not doing too bad without it. Watching TV is a little harder to do but I don’t watch that much anyhow. Poor Cliff has to repeat quite a bit for me but he is very good about it.
I also ended up in the hospital with a severe case of vertigo. It came on within seconds and was quite scary particularly since my blood pressure was 200/90. Never happened before. I could not stand up at all and kept on vomiting. We got really scared and called 911 for an ambulance. They were there within 10 minutes and off I went on a stretcher. A totally new experience for me and one I hope will not be repeated soon. The emergency was packed. The nurse later told me that it was the worse she has seen there for a long time. It took about 2 hours before the doctor could see me. All that time I was on a stretcher in the hallway but it did not matter to me, just as long as I did not have to move my head. I was still vomiting although I had nothing left in my stomach. They kept me hydrated intravenously and after I was stabilized around 8.30 at night I was able to get Cliff to take me home.  The doctor ordered a CT scan and that came back normal so I am glad about that.

Now I feel really good again. Last week I made and canned 19 pints of spaghetti sauce and today just tomatoes whole. It was a fun and I will have to do it again.
I went shopping today and the gent in front of me bought 4 tomatoes and I just about fainted, the price came to $ 2.64. Imagine the “gold” I have in the jars ☺
Enough of my rambling.
Good night everybody ☺