I did it!!

Our family began a new little adventure this year that I am sooooo excited about, yet soooooo scared of!  We planted a garden.  Well, really two gardens.  The littles have their own garden, about 4 ft by 4ft, filled with carrots, radishes, green beans, cherry tomatoes, and a mystery plant!!  It never dawned on me to write down what we planted in there.

This picture is about 2.5 weeks old, so they have all grown so much.  We have even already pulled about half of the radishes up.  YUM.

The big garden is much larger.  It has 8 pretty long rows.  Or it HAD 8.  We had a lot of rain a few weeks ago so row 8 is in row 8 and in row 7 and I think maybe even a little in row 6.  As of today, the plants were getting higher and I had two tomatoes and two jalapenos.  I am soooooo excited and dreaming of salsa!

So then it dawned on me I MIGHT have a lot of tomatoes.  And green beans.  And other things.  What do I do?  I bought a pressure cooker.  And it sat in my garage for the last 2-3 months.  Because I am terrified of that thing.  I want to do it but It. Is. So. Scary.

But I pretended like I was going to do it anyway!  So I bought a bunch of jars from a lady here in town, I bought the lids, I bought some fruits to make my own jam and apple butter.  I did everything but pull that thing out of the box.  'Cause we all know that I can't make homemade stuff like that, or can, or pressure cook!

BUT...I did it!!  I made my own strawberry jam and apple butter!  (I did cheat a little, as these don't require water bath or pressure canning.)

Feeling pretty proud of myself, I must have decided to go for broke.  I pulled out that pressure cooker.  I READ all the instructions.  I cooked four packages of chicken quarters, pulled the meat from the bones and froze them, made homemade chicken broth (these I had done before), then put the broth in jars and pressure cooked them!  I didn't even burn the house down!  Or blow anything up!

So now that I have that first batch under my belt, BRING ON THE GARDEN GOODIES!!

If I keep this up, I am going to get the hang of this domestic life thing.  Just in time for the hubs to say I have to go back to work.