Sweet home Chicago

Time for some good news now. I got accepted to a graduate program in Chicago! Even though this won't take place until after a summer of being unemployed and living in my parents' basement, this means wonderful things for our Plan to Can. How could that be, you ask?

1. Come fall, I will be living a relatively short distance (compared to Texas, where I was previously planning to go) from Michigan. This means that I can lug more canned goods to my new home.
2. More excitingly, this means that I can now add a new dimension of food preservation to my summer goals — fruit-freezing!
3. Speaking of freezing, Chicago is famous for being a cold and miserable place in the winter. All the more reason to invite people over for fresh (frozen) blueberry cobbler and baked ziti with locally-grown and canned tomato sauce!
4. Canning is all about reducing food transportation costs, and by extension, our carbon footprint. The closer I live to home/Michigan/the source of our canned delicacies, the less of a hypocrite I will be in touting this philosophy!

Summer of Savings

I am bummed to report that my lead on a summer job just fell through. Apparently no one is hiring right now....?

This is good news, however, for our Plan to Can. First of all, unemployment is an excellent reason to can your own food. Secondly, since I will likely be living in my parents' basement all summer, I will have boatloads of free time to organize this complex operation. I will also lobby my sister to join, since she's the only one who hasn't emailed me her enthusiastic response to this blog (ahem).

Which brings me to my next topic, emailing vs. blogging. Grandma and my Great-Aunt Becky (our newest recruit, see below) have voiced understandable doubts about joining the blogosphere. I agree that it is tricky. So for the meantime, I will post their emailed comments here.

Let's start with Aunt Becky's response* to my Call to Can:

"I'd love to can with you this summer. I could make it to at least one. I have fond memories of Mom canning tomatoes in the summer kitchen behind the trailer and almost as fond memories of helping her squish the tomatoes through a sieve when I was a kid."  

"Even when she wasn't feeling well, a couple of years before she died, she had Dad carry things out so she could do the canning. I think she took great satisfaction in seeing the beautiful jars of red tomato juice lining up on the table. I know I took great satisfaction in eating chili made from her efforts. It took me years to adjust to store bought tomato juice."

-Aunt Becky, Louisville

*Lydia, recall that Aunt Becky lives all the way down in Kentucky, yet she has committed to can.