The Latest Reason My Mother Is Glad I Married Jeff

He cans.

That's right...this man can can. (Don't you love the English language that lets you say things like "he can can"?) :)

We had all these lovely jalapenos going to waste in our garden, so Jeff decided that enough was enough and he rescued them and proceeded to learn how to can. After one conversation with my mother about the process and minimal assistance from me, he was off and running. The results? Six quarts of home-canned jalapenos from last night...and probably five or six more tonight which he'll can while he stays home with David since Josiah and I are off to see a local production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.

My mother is so proud of Jeff. When I told her on the phone last night what project Jeff was working on, her voice simply pulsed with pride through the phone lines. You could actually hear her smile.

I couldn't help but notice a couple of differences between Jeff and I last night as I watched his canning process:
1. He is a pro at "winging it," whereas I study out the exact way to do things. For example, for the solution that you pour on the jalapenos before you can them, I was ready to look in the book to see precisely how much vinegar, how much water, etc. Jeff just started pouring until it "seemed right."
2. He wanted to know HOW the canning process works, WHY the jars seal, WHY some jars need to be canned in a pressure canner and some can be canned in a hot water bath (not really a bath, for those of you unfamiliar with canning terminology...simply a big kettle of boiling water with jars in it...has nothing to do with a bathtub). I don't understand how or why it all works; I simply know it does and that's all I need to know.

Without a doubt, he is much more adventurous than I with projects like this. Can jalapenos? Sure, I can do that! Bake bread from scratch while living in Israel? No problem! Make my own tortillas? Absolutely! What a guy. And this is, of course, one of the reasons that I too am glad I married this man. :)

And, by the way, Jeff isn't the only man in this neck of the woods who has canning experience. My own dear dad has been known to can tomatoes when his "women folk" were out of town. Just like Jeff couldn't stand to see the jalapenos going to waste, so too my dad couldn't bear to waste good tomatoes...so on went his apron and into the canner went the tomatoes!

Another "by the way"...Blogger is obviously run by city folk and not country bumpkins because Blogger's spellcheck didn't even recognize the word "canner"! :)