A Mid-August Post, 2018

The kids are back in school, and I am trying to regain my brain-hold on the world outside of the one that is occupied three young voices.

First Day of School photo. They hate this ritual.
I enjoy seeing their evasive antics each year.

I had big plans for their return to institutionalized education. Most of those plans have been waylaid as plans tend to get. At least there is predictability in that things hardly ever work out as planned. I guess I can find comfort in that these days.

Today, however, things are going as planned. Thanks to my less-than-disciplined gardening practices, I ended up with a large pile of volunteer winter squash. It would have been nice if it had sprouted a little later in the season, but I will take them as a gift of grace at this point in life. The reality is that since the squash ripened mid-summer, most of them won't keep through the winter, so I determined to can some as soup for quick, easy meals in the future.

Huuuuge. (See foot for reference.)

I actually remembered to buy carrots and celery from the store this morning. That in itself was a small miracle. I usually only remember one thing at a time while I'm out, and I remembered to drop the kids off, get the oil changed in the van, AND stop at the store. Out in my jungle of a garden, I dug up some onions. This was another small miracle as the stalks had long ago died out and I it took a keen eye to spot where to dig. 

Back inside, I whipped out the food processor to make the slicing of veggies quicker. I can't say the appliance sliced much. Most of the carrots and celery were just mangled into little bits. But that's fine; the soup gets pureed in the end. Next they were cooked for a bit in the pan while the squash finished roasting in the oven.

Since Finley is a vegetarian, I decided to can some of the batch in smaller jars using veggie broth. I prefer the soup made with chicken broth, so I used full quart-sized jars for us omnivores.

As I had never canned soup before, I consulted the internets and read somewhere to leave the pureeing until you use the soup later. So now, I sit typing as eight jars of future goodness spend their allotted time in the pressure canner.

Speaking of the internets, I got to thinking. There are so many resources available online. Any time I have a question, I can consult that world wide web and find an answer or two. Most of the skills in life we might ever want to hone, we can learn about through YouTube. I got to thinking about how my kids despise the idea of eating any animal they knew in person and how it would take desperation for them to gladly eat home-raised meat. At least, in the event of a zombie-apocalypse (and inevitable failure of the nets) our family might survive a little better than most. We will have soup that might last a week.