Meatball canning, Tropical Storm Irene, Better Grade, and Blueberries

Jeff was inspired yesterday while I was working on my GIS course and he decided to can meatballs!

Nothing like the threat of a hurricane to encourage you to prepare some food for our food supply in the basement.

I’ve never heard of canning meatballs. I’m still new to this whole canning thing, and still can’t figure out why it isn’t called ‘jarring’. Last year was my first attempt at canning when Jeff helped me jar up some of my homemade apple sauce.

The meatballs seemed like a long process to me, but it smelled delicious. Jeff had to make the meatballs (he went with a beef/pork mixture) and then he had to cook the outside of the meatballs over high heat, and then jar them up with some broth.

Then they went in his pressure cooker pot for 75 minutes (outside on the propane burner). (I didn’t even know we had a pressure cooker! Jeff said he did salmon once and it was delicious!)

The pressure cooker pot only fits four 500mL jars though, so Jeff had to do two phases of jars, into the night. Our new stove has a ceramic top, and it will get all marked up if we place a rockin’ and rollin’ pot on it for hours. The propane burner we use for the lobster pot works perfect on the porch, and keeps the steam and noise outside.

We went to town today to see if we could get a bigger pressure cooker pot so Jeff can fill his 1L mason jars, but none of our stores had one (no surprise). Jeff will be in Halifax this week so he’ll look there.

Weather Update

It is REALLY humid today. Everything feels sticky. This morning we had no wind at all, but suddenly a breeze started and we had a quick downpour of rain. We’ve had a few quick rain dumps since, but none of them lasted longer than a minute.

It’s 5pm now and the fog is already moving in. I can’t see the top of the other side of the valley.

Overnight we are supposed to get more rain and wind, with the gusts up to 90 km/hr that could last all day tomorrow.

We aren’t doing much to prepare for this one. It seems much different that when we’re waiting for a hurricane to smash into the Nova Scotia coast.

The best part, is there is another one building off the coast of Africa that looks like it wants to follow the same track as Irene. Look for it to hit the eastern U.S. after Labour Day!

Blueberries

We are surrounded by commercial wild blueberry farms. They are harvesting now, so we stopped at our local berry farm store to pick up 10 lbs of blueberries for $28. They are already between layers of waxed paper in the freezer. Once they are frozen solid, we’ll repack them with the vacuum sealer so we can have beautiful blueberries all winter. Woo hoo!

Yesterday’s Quiz

I re-wrote the quiz I flunked yesterday and got a 24/25. Much better! Except I know I’m not satisfied and will likely re-write it again. It’s good learning actually. Each quiz has different questions. Some are multiple choice, some fill in the blank, and a few of them are assignments that take a bit of work in ArcMap.

This is my first online course. It is easy to not absorb too much when you are just following along the steps, doing what the lesson tells you to do. Once the quiz comes, then it is time to really learn how to do the work on your own.