Gardening and Life

This week I have put 100 ears of corn in the freezer. To that I added 8 pkgs of cream style corn. It is so goooooooooooooooooooodddddddddd.
Does that add enough emphasis?
The smell of fresh peas always bring back pleasant memories.
Today smells like HOME.
I am putting green and yellow beans and black eye peas in the freezer.
When I was growing up, my Mom always "put down" her veggies. She put the canning pot on the stove and we washed and cleaned and packed away the fresh vegetables.

I began learning the art of preserving food the summer I was 12. I had been part of the planting process, the gathering, the shelling and snapping process but not as involved as I was that summer.
My older sister had married and moved away from home. The duties she had were suddenly thrust onto me. I was only happy to learn. ( I would have been happier climbing trees or playing in a make believe fort, but l had a duty to grow up.)
I sat many days on the porch or in the living room, with Mama, and shelled beans or peas. I stood at the table many times packing the food into freezer bags and more often than not, I had the job of checking bags for holes. Yes, we saved our bags from year to year. No waste in our house.
A time of sitting in a Big house, with the breeze blowing through.
The big house fan sitting in the kitchen window to pull the heat out and pull the cool air in from the tree shaded sided of the house.
A big glass of sweetened tea beside us as we worked. Mama making sure we put the right amount of peas and the juice in each bag.
It took a lot of work but it was fun to sit in the living room and shell the beans and peas.
We usually had a big brown bag beside our chair and filled it with our shells and ends.
We often would take from our someone Else's bag or bowl, or better yet, we put our unshelled beans or peas in their stash. Of course we did this when they left the room on a potty or drink break, then we would exclaim on how little they had shelled.
All in fun.
I did that just last evening. When my husband and I were snapping beans, I took his shelled beans and left him with a few and told him "You sure are slow, Look how many I did and you have only a hand full".

Also I have a few tips to make life easier.
I have made a few discoveries this week or so.
One:
I have this huge salad spinner. A Kitchen Aid, Did you know it works great for cleaning beans? Of course that is after a few good washings. I spin and spin and all the dirt and debris come off.
Pretty good idea I think. Has made a world of difference in my freezing process.
Two:
If you let your sour dough starter sit on the shelf in the pantry and you notice a bad odor, it can be the starter. I scrubbed my pantry floor, (which is also my laundry room,) I cleaned under the washer and dryer.
The odor was like musty old water.
Yesterday as I pulled an item off the shelf I saw the jar. Black, black, Mold on top. Guess I did not clean hard enough or I would have seen the starter. (Which my DIL told me about the two weeks prior).
I moved that jar to the garage and now my pantry smells fresh. Again.
Oh the things we learn late in life.