Toddlers and Tomatoes

I can honestly say being a mom has never been so much fun. This kid cracks me up hourly! Yesterday was the dirtiest he has ever been. While I was making dinner, Jacob was out front with his dad and the neighbor and our Neighbor's baby daughter. When I called Jacob to come in and eat his dad sent him home looking like THIS:


This pictures doesn't do it justice. He is hard to take pictures of these days, he moves so much and wants to run the camera.

As you can see by these pictures, Jacob loves glasses. I bought him his own pair of sunglasses, that he can only wear when we go outside (or he'd run around the house all day with them and eventually poke his eye out!). The first two sunglasses pics are what I found after we returned home from some errands. Oh, and don't worry, I do buckle him up all the way in the car. I just remembered my camera was in the car AFTER I started to unbuckle him ;)

A great woman from church not only taught me how to can Salsa recently, but she also gave me TONS of tomatoes and bell peppers last week. Sunday I spent the evening canning tomatoes. All I have to show here are salsa and halved tomatoes. I also made tomato paste. Word to the wise, buying them is always better. I spent hours and hours trying to get the right consistency, which never happened, then 50 minutes processing (I am getting a pressure canner ASAP), only to find that there was WAY TOO MUCH AIR in them and had to throw it all out. Live and learn. Today: Fresh Salsa. Yum! Can't wait.

I've found this great website called the National Center for Home Food Preservation and an interesting article from the University of Minnesota on Food Safety: Outdated canning methods for apples, potatoes, and pumpkins. They are worth the read for anyone interested.

I'm looking for a hard copy book on canning. I'm mostly interested in the safety. I can read online all I want, but some of the sources are suspicious and I want to be safe! Any Ideas?

p.s. I'm pretty annoyed at blogger for taking away my ability to change fonts. Hmmph!