The Fruits of My Labor

It has been a very busy week! As you already know on Monday my grandma came over and helped me can my first batch of peaches. On Tuesday my dad went to the church orchard and brought me back a lot more peaches. So on Wednesday both my dad and my grandma came over and helped me can more peaches and make some peach jam. I also had the great blessing of being able to go down the street on Tuesday to pick some plums from a woman in our ward. I picked a whole bucket full. So on Thursday my mother in law came over and helped me make some plum jelly. I will also be making some fruit leather with some of it. Unfortunately I woke up with a sore throat on Thurs and by the end of the day was starting to get a runny & stuffy nose, ughh! I think my body was telling me that I wasn't getting enough sleep this week and working too hard. But I still made it over to my dad's Thurs night for the big BSU vs Oregon game. I kept debating on whether to leave early because the game didn't start until around 8. I stuck it out to the end and was glad to see our Broncos win! Unfortunately I got to bed at midnight and Jack woke me up at 5 am. Why doesn't he understand I need my sleep?

Since I am still sick today I decided not to go to the cabin this weekend and to try and take it easy, which is difficult to do sometimes.

I am also very excited about the fact that I am finally taking the steps to learn how to make my own baby food. The first food I tried was carrots and tonight I did zucchini. I'm so excited that I've figured this out and can't believe I didn't do this with the first two. It is so easy and is going to save us a lot of money!

This is on Wednesday when I was pouring peach jam into the jars. It's such a wonderful feeling to be able to do stuff like this. I feel kind of like a pioneer woman.....well, not really. Pioneer women had things much harder than I do.

There's my sweet grandma who came over on Monday and Wednesday to help me.

And my of course my awesome dad, who got my 2nd load of peaches for me and then came on Wednesday to help can them.

There's my wonderful mother in law who taught and assisted me with the plum jelly on Thursday.

Look at all those plums. Yum!

Garrett didn't like the peach jam but he LOVED the plum jelly!

The finished product of my plum jelly.

Total canned: 18 jars of plum jelly, 14 jars of peach jam, 21 quarts of canned peaches (And I'm not actually finished making the plum jelly yet so there will be about 4 or 5 more of those)





And here's a little tutorial on my baby food making process "Make Your Own Baby Food 101"

For zucchini, all you do is wash it off and then slice it up into thin slices and put them in a steam cooker.

Steam until tender and then place in the blender. (I'm a poet and didn't know it, hehe)

Puree it until smooth and then scoop into an ice tray and put in the freezer. (For zucchini you don't need to add water when in the blender but I did with the carrots, so you may have to add water to some things)

I did these carrots on Wednesday night. So after freezing in the ice cube tray I take them out and put them in freezer bags and back in the freezer until I need them.

I'm so proud of myself for finally doing this and I think I can say I'm done with buying baby food in jars. I'm loving my blender now. Yay!