Green Beans

It's harvest time here in Idaho--The land of canning anything that comes out of or grows underneath the ground!

I thought it would be a nice-bonding experience for me to teach my two terrific daughters how to can vegetables this year. Unfortunately, the girls both came down with something on canning day, so I had to think quick and somehow convince the boys that what they wanted most to do that day was to can beans!

So...how do you get a busy 16-year-old to unplug himself electronically and join you in the kitchen? You pull out the back scratcher and get a couple of kids to do the dirty work! While Alex snapped the ends off the green beans, the little boys scratched his back ( the little boys are always eager to help me in the kitchen)!

So fresh, you could eat them raw! We had a bounteous harvest from the community garden this year. Each family canned at least 21 quarts of beans! (Connor and his funky flat mowhawk).
What a fun game--fill the jars with beans!
What a sense of accomplishment!
I was obviously way too tired to snap a photo of the shiny, steaming jars of green beans all in a row.

The boys and I had a great day together in the kitchen. It's amazing how much less emotion hangs around with you on boy bonding day! We had a bunch of fun!

Don't fret about my lack of bonding with the girls--we still have peaches, pears, tomatoes, salsa, etc., etc . . .

Later on we would can applesauce. Phew that was a lot of work! We also got 21 quarts of applesauce. It would have been 28, but during the last batch, I completely ran out of sugar, I broke the bottom off of one of the jars and had applesauce everywhere (hey, that should go on my list), and I simultaneously burned what would have been the final batch.