Yesterday I put up two bushels of tomatoes, made two batches of gherkin pickles, and froze a quantity of green beans, peas, and bell peppers. Somehow the list doesn't seem very long, but I was at it for twelve hours. The back is feeling it today. Someday I want to design a kitchen where the sink juts out a little, so you can sit at it on a high stool with your knees under it. That would make canning much easier!
While I'm at it, I'd create a secondary canning kitchen altogether, out of the family's way, with a heavy-duty stove that can handle high heat for twelve hours at a time. Even with a special canning element, the burner gets discoloured and it's a pain cleaning up the mess that magically forms...I guess it's the sugar or vinegar in the steam that makes everything so terrible to clean up.
And hey, while I'm revamping the house anyway, I'd form all the rooms into a square with a big atrium in the centre, with windows or moveable walls on every side so I could open everything up and get a good cross-breeze going.
And I'd create a main-floor store room with temperature and light control, lined with shelves the perfect size for four hundred mason jars, barrels of flour and sugar, and #10 cans of dry goods. And a climate-controlled place for apples, potatoes, and pumpkins. And a cistern for water storage tapped right into the house.
A girl can dream, can't she?
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