Canning May Not Be What It Used To Be...

We've all heard the saying, beauty is only skin deep. It occurred to me, while I was peeling tomatoes to be canned, that tomatoes were the perfect metaphor for that. All the oogie spots and blemishes on the tomatoes magically disappeared as the skins came off. Even some of the tomatoes I was going to reject were salvageable once their skins were removed. And it got me thinking that perhaps this and many other lessons were learned while families canned, or gardened, or made things together, generations ago. And I started to feel a little nostalgic and morose that my family never did things like that. We were all about the ease of life and the doing and the getting to the next place. Which, I admit, also has it's virtues.

And then it occurred to me that even though this was Grandmom's canner, but it wasn't my Grandmom's canning, so to speak. After all, I believe that a good drink will make the job go faster. Even surrounded by Great Aunt Ruth's juice glasses, and Grandmom's pot, and canning jars that have come from God knows where, I still give the process my own vibe. And I like that.

To date, this drink seems to go best with canning tomatoes -- it's a sipper, and with a long job of boiling, peeling, dicing, packing and processing tomatoes, a girl could use a long-lasting sippin' drink. You can find the recipe here, if you want.

I've realized (perhaps with the help of another cocktail), although I feel a little sad for what could have been, I'm sure I wouldn't have enjoyed the process then nearly as much as I do now. And for that, there is no substitute.