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 ☺

Not a cloud in the Sky

and we really need the rain. Cliff and I walked in the woods yesterday and it is bone-dry. It makes it very scary to live where we are. Lots of tall trees around. I just hope everybody takes care not to start a fire inadvertently.
It really was nice weather for travellers on the long weekend though.
We are having lots of tomatoes now but they still are not ripe enough for my liking. Great for slicing etc. but I want to make tomato sauce and for that they have to be soft to the touch.
I just opened a jar of 3-fruit and noticed that I canned it on Sept. 8th. Our pears and plums are not nearly ripe to eat. It seems that everything is about 3 weeks later than normal. The damp spring and even part of the summer was great for the cucumber crop. I make a cucumber salad everyday and still they are coming on strong. I gave away lots too. Just now I cut swiss chard for lunch but most of it is still out there. This time of the year the vegetable patch is large but when the winter comes we have to buy veggies. The only vegetable I like frozen is peas. Every other type I rather eat fresh.  Not sure how the squash harvest will be. They are still very small and not plentiful this year. That sure changes from year to year.
Years ago this would be the time when I start to gather things together for our trip South for the winter. I really miss that time. Now we gather wood for the fireplaces ☺.
We were in Kelowna for a few days some weeks ago. We really hit it lucky with the weather since it was not too hot but on the way home we drove in rain from Hope right to Vancouver Island. Driving was not too bad though and we did not run into any roadwork. I guess that was due to the rain. On the way to Kelowna we saw 2 long line-ups in the opposite direction. We were hoping we would not be ending up in one of those. So the rain was good for us in a way.
School will start tomorrow and we have to be very careful driving through school zones. I am sure police will be checking to try to keep folks from speeding.
That’s it for today.
Good bye everybody ☺