Thursday, September 27, 2007
Up Early!
Just before bedtime last night, about 11 pm, I emptied the jelly bag, wash it out and place the bowl of grape juice in fridge for the night. Around 5 am this morning Jay sat up in bed waking me up. He said he had heard a terrible scream which with my good ear buried in the pillow I didn’t hear it. Upon getting up he saw a few vehicles stopping out in front of the house then proceeding on. Our neighbor, Phyllis, leaves for work around this time so our first concern is that she got off all right. Not being able to see because of the darkness and with traffic returning to a normal speed we went back to bed.
Unable to get back to sleep I got up, turned on the canner and tea kettle, and started the dish washer with the jelly jars in it. I pulled the juice from the fridge and measured it to determine if I had enough for two batches. Being a little short I added the rest of the apple cider I had, some juice from a fresh pineapple, and top it off with water. I got the first batch on and had the jars and lids in hot water. I bottled it, water bathed them for 10 minutes, tasted the results,and started cooking the second batch.
The results were 16 eight oz jars of, surprisingly, some pretty good tasting grape jelly. I cleaned up the dishes, put all the canning equipment in the back of the truck to go to the basement food room, and had everything but the kitchen floor under control by 8:34 am.
It is daylight now and I can see what caused the the commotion this morning. Someone hit a deer and it is laying in my front ditch. Now I have to figure out what to do about that. Oh well we will get it taken care of somehow. Hope you and I both have a better day than that poor deer!
