First Batch

I bought myself a canner-- a momentous purchase in the life of any ranch woman. It's a black speckleware beauty, looking like it's been lovingly bathing Ball jars in hot water since long before I was born, rather than simply waiting on a shelf at Ace Hardware for some naiive but enthusiastic young woman to come along. Now that she's here, we're canning like mad. Eight golden jars of applesauce sit gleaming on the counter. It feels like the county fair; I want to place blue ribbons by them each and write a comment about their smooth texture and hint of cinnamon.

Really, I should admit, there are three second-place jars. Our stew pots weren't big enough for my expansive and overzealous applesauce imagination, so we used the dutch oven for the first batch. Of course, the dutch oven has been strictly used for cooking over the coals, and the acid in the apples quickly soaked up the color of the charcoal-like coating, turning my first batch into a sort of grey-green concoction. Alas, three of my jars look like some kind of witch's brew. I'm calling the whole project a "win!" nonetheless, since despite the hardware clerk's comment that we would be so sick of canning we'd turn my pot in for scrap metal, we are anything but sick of it. In fact, the two of us are so enthusiastic, we've started planning a garden! (Surely, I am yet again overly enthusiastic and grandly imaginative, but that should only provide some funny stories to laugh about come spring.)