Canning 101, or "We Be Jammin!"

Okay, I've been gone for awhile, but as I'm now attempting to pursue a career in writing, I figured I'd better...you know...write.

Since I've blogged last, many things have changed. Andy Griffith and Ernest Borgnine died, the Higgs-Boson was (probably) discovered, and Channing Tatum starred in a movie about stripping. Actually, all those things happened just this last week, and what a CRAZY week it's been! But what I was actually getting at was the invention of Pinterest. Pinterest is a website that allows you to plan the fabulous life you'd be having if you weren't sitting on your ass in front of the computer. Although just about anything online can be pinned, most people seem to use it to collect ideas about DIY projects and food. (It's sort of a microcosm of the internet in general - the power of vast knowledge is at your fingertips, but most people just end up in that weird part of youtube.) If you check out my Pinterest account, you'll see that I have some pretty amazing plans for my life. However, once one (not me, just "one") approaches one's 500th-odd Pin, one begins to think that maybe one should tackle some of those DIY projects that have been looming.

So, to that end, yesterday I learned to can.

My great-grandma made jam and jelly, and I have always wanted to learn how. I seemed to hear from everyone that it was really hard, or messy, or time-consuming, or all of the above. Still, I decided to undertake it. I was going to make a post that was all pinterest-friendly in its helpfulness, giving you all some tips and step-by-step instructions on how to go about this. However, lucky for you, my first batch of peach jam burned horribly and I realized I didn't have a clue what I was doing and it was ridiculous for me to teach you how to make jam when I was just learning it myself. So, instead, I will answer some FAQs that I had about canning before I actually did it, and give you some resources written by people who actually know what they're doing. I'm also going to make a lot of puns, which will be indicated by italics.

My FAQs asked by my past self, answered by my present self.  

Q. Is it expensive to get started with canning?
A. No - you don't need most of the stuff that the canning people tell you you need. The jars are pretty important though. (Why is it called canning if you use jars? I don't know, but it was a jarring realization.)

Q. Do you have to be extremely germ-conscious and sanitary in order to make sanitary jam?
A. Ha. Let's think about this. I did it successfully. So no. But don't consult any government-run websites on this topic, or they will pretty much convince you that jam can only be made at the CDC or by the FDA.

Q. Does it take a long time?
A. It doesn't really. It takes longer if you burn 5 pounds of peaches though. (I got myself into a jam on that one!)

Q. Ha, ha! *Wipes away a tear of laughter*. Speaking of jam, what fruits can be turned into jam?
A. Just about everything I've attempted thus far, including peach, strawberry, cherry, blueberry...

Pictured: Me, not having a life anymore. 

Q. What's the difference between jelly, jam, preserves, and marmalade?
A. See my links below for more info, but basically, jelly = gelatinous juice of a fruit (no chunks), jam = chunks of fruit and its juices, preserves = preserved fruit, jury is still out on marmalade (for me personally, though I made some with onions. No, don't say "Ew" - there are savory jams as well as sweet, and onion marmalade can be used for cooking or as a spread on bruschetta, etc.)

Q. What is pectin and do I need to use it?
A. Pectin is a substance found naturally in fruits that you also add to jam/jelly to make it a little more gelatinous. If you don't want "additives" in your jam, then things get a little sticky. You could just cook the fruit for way longer. But that's illogical because pectin is already in fruit. You also add sugar and acid to jam, and those naturally occur in fruits as well. So if you don't want to add any of that, then just eat a freakin' piece of fruit and stop making jam, you dirty hippy.

Pictured: Materials - many optional

Q: Acid?
A. Calm down, hippy. It's lemon juice. Or lime, if you want to get a little upper class with it.

Q. Do you think this is a hobby you can invest in, or is this going to end up like candle making?
A. I don't care for the insinuation contained in this question. Not everyone sticks with every hobby they ever pick up, okay? But yes, canning seems like a pretty solid hobby. It requires very little time, talent, or supplies and the benefits are self-explanatory.

Pictured: Self-explanatory benefits.

Q. Did Josh help at all or did he just watch baseball the entire time?
A. He did both. But you'll get more done when he's gone and you're insanely bored and motivated for no reason on a long Sunday and end up making like, 400 jars of jam for no apparent reason. You'll also briefly consider going into the jam-making business. Street vendors are on Forbes' list of 11 hottest industries for start-ups ... but then again, so is something called "Relaxation Beverages", sooo...

Pictured below: Josh trying to prove that he helped.

 Pictured above: What Josh actually did. 

In conclusion, canning is a sweet hobby. If you decide to try it yourself, here are some links I found helpful. (I promise, none of these will take you to a website that tells you to turn up your volume and then yells out, "Hey everybody, I'm looking at" ... nevermind.)

National Center for Home Food Preservation (Yes, this is a thing.)
Ball Jar Recipe Calculator
Blue Chair Fruit - The Difference between jam, jelly, preserves, and marmalade
The Pioneer Woman's Guide to Canning  - This woman's blog is amazing. She is the reason I'm never going to have a homesteading blog. There's no point, because it'll never be as good as hers. Also, I don't want to end up like this woman:

: 

Pictured: Ugh. 

The Blog of Unnecessary Capital Letters and AWESOME PILGRIM SKATER

Ok, I don't normally do this (update my blog more than...once a month) but I just HAVE to. You'll see why, after the following COMPLETELY UNNECESSARY paragraph: (skip if you must, at the peril of your reputation in future literary discussions.)

I have recently become a subscriber of an elite service called "iGoogle." Maybe you've heard of it. Anyway, we elite subscribers of this elite service add what we the elite call "GADGETS" to our home pages. "Gadgets" is an opportunity to bring just a tad more enrichment to our already ridiculously over-enriched lives. (What, with the art museum opening galas and all.) For example, among the many options I was afforded, I chose selections such as "LOCAL WEATHER" and "FACEBOOK" (because I wasn't checking it enough.) More importantly, I've added animal husbandry facets to my page such as "Turtles" and "Hamster." I feel guilty when I forget to feed them AND THEY AREN'T REAL. The one turtle is a real doucher. He eats all the food before the other turtle can get it. I named the doucher turtle Leonardo and the cool turtle Michelangelo. Guess what? Michelangelo actually ends up getting more food because I reward his chill-ness. You might think I'm making all this up just to entertain you on my blog, but it's all really happening, in my mind. It's a pretty happy place. unneccesary

Sooooo...getting to the essence of this blog. One of my gadgets is "Art of the Day." I dropped everything and blogged when I saw this, the most amazing painting I've seen...well, ever.
























Other than its inherent awesomeness, I'd like you to note a few characteristics of this painting.
1) "The Skater" has buckled skates. BUCKLED SKATES.
2) "The Skater" is pulling a skating move that would land most of us in the hospital. (Be honest with yourself. Think about your past skating experiences...there you go.)
3) "The Skater" has a funny hat. And buckled shoes. OMG, wait...
4) "The Skater" is a pilgrim! He's SORT OF A PILGRIM!!!!
5) "The Skater" realizes he is incredibly awesome at what he's doing and even though he's dead-slash-not real, he's WAY BETTER THAN YOU'LL EVER BE! Also, he sort of looks like John Lithgow, as all slightly smug awesome people do.
6) OMG, this didn't even occur to me until now, but he HAS HIS ARMS CROSSED. Would any of us, in good conscience, ICE SKATE with our arms crossed? Imagine falling with your arms crossed! *Instant douchebag moment*, captured forever on film. (I forgot to tell you, we were filming that.) Guess who doesn't look like a doucher? That's right, the Skater. Because he doesn't. fall. down. Ever.

As you read this, I am in the process of constructing a shrine in my bedroom built around the awesome skater and his mystical powers of anti-douchbaggery.

P.S. When I saved this picture on my computer, I saved it as "The Sk8ter", because I felt he deserved that level of awesomeness.
P.P.S. When I was circa-14, I, as a joke (I promise) bought something called "Boyfriend in a Box." His name was Skye (yes, with an "e") and the kit came with a card signed by "Skye" that said something along the lines of "I can't wait to see you!" The card had penguins on it and the "signature" was so clearly printed, even by 1990's standards, that it made you feel bad for anyone who bought the kit in order to actually try to pass of "Skye" as her boyfriend. What made me think of that? Oh yeah, "Skye" was a "skater" - he had a super rebellious haircut and was wearing a sweater that had a STRIPE on it. He was extremely extreme. Rachel W. can attest to the real existence of Skye and his undying love for me.
P.P.P.S. Guess who makes Skye look like a doucheroni? (That's right, "THE SKATER.")

I suck at laundry

I am going to become a monk like Friar Tuck so I can wear a burlap sack tied with a rope and when it gets dirty I'll just throw it out and get a new sack.

My tips for having more laundry than you'll ever be able to wash:

1. Be a girl who likes clothes, thereby owning a lot of them. Preferably they should be all different categories so that you need to change clothes multiple times a day (work, casual, workout, etc.) Also, keep clothes forever, even that skirt that you could now only wear as a legwarmer.

2. Don't choose an outfit the night before. This is a foolish way to save valuable time. You're much better off waiting till the morning, when your brain is half asleep and you have no spare time to hunt for missing shoes or bras that aren't neon-colored and show through your tops.

3. Try on every conceivable item in your closet before deciding on an outfit. Don't be afraid to try on summer items in the winter, or clothes that haven't fit since college. These disasters will instill you with a healthy dose of self-loathing that will get your morning started right.

4. As you nix outfit after outfit, throw everything in heaps on the floor in a trail leading from your bedroom to your bathroom and back again. It is your pants' fault that you are 2 sizes larger than them; don't think that taking your anger out on the pants is a waste of time - it isn't! Show those pants who's boss by refusing to put them back on a hanger!

5. When returning from work, discard worn clothes in a pile on the floor. You are way too tired to worry about putting them in a laundry hamper right now. Just find your sweatpants and collapse in front of the TV.

6. Return to the pile days later. With any luck, you have now forgotten which clothes are actually dirty and which clothes are just try-on rejects. Even better, your clean clothes should be sufficiently wrinkled now as to warrant washing even if they weren't originally dirty.

7. Bask in your laundry nightmare as it not only becomes a cycle, but, due to shrinking availability of clothes on hangers, actually becomes worse with time!

I'm baaaack

I got a new laptop; therefore I must resume blogging. Otherwise, how will I fill the endless hours I will now spend at hip coffee shop d'jour? (aka Starbucks.) Actually I have not been to a coffee shop with my laptop yet but once I do...look out, world. You are unprepared for a level of nonproductivity such as this.

Actually, I have been quite productive lately, if by productive you mean producing things that are not entirely necessary. I suppose artsy-craftsy is the better term. For Christmas, I got my brother Michael a collection of recipes that I will cook for him. He is a vegetarian now but may as well be a tunatarian because I swear that's all he eats. If he cooks canned tuna, rice, cheese and hot sauce and bullies me into tasting it one more time, I will flip out. If he goes to Subway one more time and brags about how he was able to trick the Subway employee into giving him a tuna sub and a veggie sub with a side of tuna for the same price, I will flip out. Hence, the gift.

I also got a Kindle for my birthday and I've got to say, it's one of the greatest things ever. I now have every book I want to read, ever, right at my fingertips. It has already come in handy on the long train rides to and from Chicago. I mostly read classic literature, and anything over 100 years old is free due to public domain, so I am in book heaven right now. I finished up "Great Expectations" and am now ready to finish "Vanity Fair." I find that I read much quicker with my Kindle because I've cut down on the losing of books/forgetting of books. It's also much easier to read different things at one time. I tend to read at least 4 or 5 different books at a time, so when I go on trips, it's annoying to drag all those along. (And then I usually don't end up reading them all anyway.) Now, I can bring the entire collection and read the whole time, or not read a single word, and I've still only toted along something that weighs about 4 ounces.

I love my new Kindle so much that I have named it (Kendall) and am knitting a cozy for it. I will post instructions for this once I am done. I am making it up as I go, so the instructions do not exist yet.

So, that's all I've been doing lately in the way of all that is unimportant.

By the way, stop reading my blog posts and telling me in person how much you liked it. Comment on it so everyone will know how much you love me. Every time I get 0 comments on a post, God kills a kitten.

Weekday Christian Education - The Trailer Trash of Religious Programs

While looking through an old Bible, I found a piece of paper where someone had written two scripture"recipes" or whatever you want to call them. Somebody else wrote them, presumably a teacher of some sort. I got this Bible as a present from my Weekday Christian Education class, which I signed up for in 3rd grade because you got to leave the classroom for an hour and go outside to a trailer. (I still don't understand how that's not a violation of church and state, but whatev.) The trailer seemed like it'd be cool but it was really beige on the inside and there were lots of boring posters with books of the Bible on them. The teachers were a young, skinny, tall and also pregnant lady, and a tiny lady who seemed EXTREMELY old. It seemed like we always wore our coats because the trailer wasn't heated (though obviously it couldn't have been cold the entire school year.) I remember that the old lady had a grey coat and the young lady had a long, maroon one that I thought was really ugly.

Anyway, I don't know if this piece of paper is from Weekday Christian Education, probably not though, because it's doubtful I would have kept a piece of paper from the 3rd grade. But I went to Sunday School at church and we would occasionally get special verses or things, so I assume it was that type of thing. One verse is Psalm 121. Pretty standard. The next is Jeremiah 11:14 -

So now I, the Lord, warn them that I am going to bring destruction on them, and they will not escape. And when they cry out to me for help, I will not listen to them.

Um, okay, that's pretty terrifying for a small child. Pretty weird. Oh wait, I think. Naturally this person simply meant to write Jeremiah 14:11 and just got mixed up. So I look that up:

The Lord said to me, "Do not ask me to help these people." (it later goes on to say, Even if they fast I will not listen to their cry for help; and even if they offer me burnt offerings, I will not be pleased with them. Instead I will kill them in war and by starvation and disease.) That's uplifting.

Would it not be hilarious and twisted for a Sunday School teacher to do that to a kid, like, "Here's your special Bible verse, Jenny! Look it up before bedtime! Then the poor kid can't sleep all that night because she's terrified God will smite her in her sleep or something.

Fortunately for 3rd grade me I rarely remembered to do what teachers asked and I did not look up the verse until now, and I can't stop laughing.

I'm sorry, but once you've played King Koopa, this is all the tribute you get.

Well, just because a lot of other bloggers punked out on me doesn't mean I'll follow suit. Here is my much clamored-for new blog post. (I'm hoping that the opinions of three people is enough to constitute a "clamor."

As you all know, the great actor Dennis Hopper recently passed away. I know for people of my parents' generation, Dennis Hopper was associated with some pretty revolutionary movies like Easy Rider and Apocalypse Now. In fact, Dennis Hopper was sort of known for "sticking it to them man." However, for people my age, this image is something of a joke, as one of Hopper's less talked about movies shows just how willing he was to take one for the man.

Most kids who grew up in the 80s and 90s played Super Mario Brothers at some point or another. I played a lot of video games growing up, mostly due to the fact that I have a brother close in age to me who has a few obsessions in life, one of which is Nintendo. Said brother was and still is unnecessarily competitive 95% of the time so video games were extremely serious business. *Case in point, we recently engaged in a war to see who can type fastest. I am currently in the lead with 101 words a minute.

If you’re between the ages of 21-40 and you don’t understand such phrases as “one up” or “star power," chances are you are reading this on a Saturday night because you have no friends. Gamers must be forgiving to people like my friend Sarah who inexplicably like Mario 2 the best, but total cultural and generational ignorance cannot be overlooked.

Imagine all us kids about my age - loyal, devoted fans of Nintendo, believing that anything stamped with a Mario face must be good. Now, imagine all our adorable, innocent faces looking up to adults with complete trust. Now imagine a movie executive roundhouse kicking all of these children in the face.

Somewhere in ’91, ’92, movie executives saw a golden opportunity to turn Super Mario Brothers into a movie. A live-action movie aaaaaannnd that’s where you lost 95% of your audience because even a 2 year old is with-it enough to realize that Dennis Hopper, reptilian as he may be, looks very little like King Koopa, a.ka. Bowser:

The film received mixed to negative reviews from critics and fans alike and was denounced by critics as "cheesy" and lacking any sort of coherent plot. Gee, who could have predicted that they’d have trouble coming up with a coherent plot? Not with so much plot provided by the original video games! From Wikipedia…:

The player takes on the role of the main protagonist of the series, Mario. The objective is to race through the Mushroom Kingdom, survive the main antagonist Bowser's forces and save Princess Toadstool.

That screams “coherent plot” to me. I mean, one the one hand you have the also incredibly successful Legend of Zelda franchise which features an iconic "predestine" hero, a well established cultural setting, a compelling princess, a villain with believable motivations, and plenty of magic and violence. On the other hand we have Italian plumbers, mushrooms and evil turtles. Of course, before we judge, we must remember that most movie executives are legally retarded. Otherwise, how do you explain something like this?

The saddest part about there not being a Zelda movie is that the currently best-remembered artistic reinterpretation was the short-lived cartoon show of 13 episodes in which Link says his catch phrase, “Well excuuuuuse me, Princess!” 27 times LITERALLY:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPxY8lpYAUM

Yeah...bet you thought I was kidding about that.

Anyway, the movie execs chose Mario Brothers and hired some talented writers (monkeys with typewriters) who developed a plot with a few tweaks to the original story. Again, from Wikipedia:

Mario and Luigi awaken a minute later and head deeper into the caves following Daisy's screaming and discover an interdimensional portal through which Mario and Luigi follow Daisy. They find themselves in a strange dystopian parallel world where a human-like race evolved from dinosaurs rather than the mammalian ancestry of true humans. 65 million years ago a meteorite crashed into the Earth and in doing so ripped the universe into two parallel dimensions. All the surviving dinosaurs of the time crossed over into this new realm before being sealed there forever. Iggy and Spike turn out to be lackeys (and cousins) of the other world's germophobic and obsessive dictator, King Koopa, descended from the T-Rex. However, the two have failed to also bring Daisy's rock, a meteorite fragment which Koopa is trying to get in order to merge his world with the real world that separated from Koopa's world during the meteor strike. It turns out that Daisy is the princess of the other dimension but when Koopa overthrew Daisy's father (and turned him into fungus), Daisy's mother took her to New York using the interdimensional portal.

If you took a 4 year old and gave him some mildly hallucinogenic drugs and some action figures, this is the movie he would construct for you. That’s how stupid this is.

Aftermath of this horrible, horrible film, again courtesy of Wikipedia:

The film states that both Mario and Luigi's last name is Mario (hence the Mario Bros.), giving rise to the idea that they are named Mario Mario and Luigi Mario. However, Nintendo has publicly stated that Mario and Luigi do not have last names in the official canon.

I find it sad that Nintendo has to make “official statements” about such matters.

And some more notable quotes:

The Super Mario Bros. movie was mentioned [in Nintendo Power magazine], only with the words, "Yes, it happened. Let us speak no more of it."

"The worst thing I ever did? Super Mario Brothers” – Bob Hoskins

And then here’s an odd one:

Shigeru Miyamoto, Mario's creator stated, "[In] the end, it was a very fun project that they put a lot of effort into," but also said, "The one thing that I still have some regrets about is that the movie may have tried to get a little too close to what the Mario Bros. videogames were.”

Whhhaaaa? Mr. Miyamoto, did you even WATCH the movie? Have you ever played or seen your own game? Just how far away from the game did you want the movie to get? Let's just breath a sigh of relief that, if the Mario Brothers movie had to happen, it at least happened before Hollywood discovered the whole "awkward and snarky = smart and funny" craze.

This blog post is so beast...

A few other English teachers at my school use songs to help their kids learn new info or get them jazzed about something. (The first rewritten song I heard was "I am getting punctuation down" in place of "Baby are you down, down, down, down, down...) I love this idea but I haven't had any time/energy this year to think about it much. This summer, my goal is to write lyrics for and record new versions of famous songs with English themes so I'll have more than enough songs (1 per week) for the entire year next year. I just found out that next year I'll be teaching only 7th grade (this year I've taught 7th and 8th) which makes it more simple (simpler? Just an English teacher, whatever.) It would also be amazing to have videos to go with them, especially in this, because as you can see I've already envisioned a Cullen vs. Black fight scene. Obviously, this all adds up to an awesomely cheezetastic summer. Who wants to help me…?!

Here is the first. I am also working on "Bad Grammar" (Bad Romance.) I am also hoping to shoot a video for that as it would give me an excellent excuse to wear head-to-toe sequins.

Sing along (loudly, in front of people) and let me know what you think. And let me know what 3-syllable band or artist name you think I should use...

“Read It”

(to the tune of “Beat It”)

So you hate reading, well think that if you will,

But soon you’ll see that reading is a lifelong skill.
So even when it’s boring or the words aren’t really clear
Just read it, just read it

I got an ipod and I want some new songs,

I want some - - - so I can sing along

Good thing I’ve got instructions; now this won’t take too long

I’ll read it, if you wanna know more

Just read it, read it,
Pick a book up and complete it

Showin’ how funky strong is your brain

to really get it, read the whole thing

Just read it, read it
Just read it, read it
Just read it, read it
Just read it, read it

Before you drive you better read all you can
Don’t wanna flunk the test, you need a better plan
You wanna drive a car, better yet drive a van
So read it, just read it

You have to show them that you're really prepared
You're playin' with your life, this ain't no truth or dare
They'll teach you, then they test you,
Then they'll tell you it's fair
So read it, if you wanna know more

Just read it, read it, read it, read it
Pick a book up and complete it
Showin' how funky and smart is your brain
To really get it, read the whole thang

Just read it, read it
Pick a book up and complete it
Read about vampires, choose the right team
Can’t put this book down or I’ll have to scream
Team Edward, Team Jacob (Jacob)

Team Edward (Edward), Team Jacob (Jacob)

(Edward & Jacob fight scene. It ends with Bella breaking up the fight)

Read it, read it

Pick a book up and complete it
Showin' how funky and smart is your brain
Want to know more? Well, read the whole thang

Just read it, read it

Pick a book up and complete it
Showin' how funky and smart is your brain
To really get it, read the whole thang

Just read it, read it,
Pick a book up and complete it
Showin' how funky and smart is your brain
To really get it, read the whole thang

Read it, read it, read it, read it
Pick a book up and complete it
Showin' how funky and smart is your brain
To really get it, read the whole thang

(fadeout)