Pregnant and in the Kitchen
But not barefoot. My feet just don't handle that so well anymore. Alternate blog title? Pop goes the Jar Lid!
It's that time of year when the plums start to ripen, and my thoughts turn to plum jam. Luckily we have a friend in a nearby town who always gets more plums than he can use. Ever eager to help, I take them off his hands for him, and to make sure he always has "more than he can use" I always send a couple jars of jam his way.
Tonight was a little sad though. Usually Don helps me "can" the jam so we can have it all year, but since he's out of town, I had to do it alone, excepting a brief interval when both kids rose from bed just before I began ladling steaming hot jam into the jars. They were so impressed, I decided to let them stay up till that was done. I was also forced, due to an over-full schedule and ripening plums, to work on jam till 10 tonight instead of doing it tomorrow.
The thing that really brought a pang to my heart was when the jar lids began their characteristic "pop," indicating they had sealed. This always brings a smile to my lips, since it means everything went well, and I still smiled tonight. However, Don always calls out the number of each jar as it seals. "One!" Pause, pause. "Two!" Sometimes minutes will go by between jars sealing, but he never fails to call them out. I counted the numbers in my head, and smiled to think of him, but it wasn't quite the same.