Adventures in Canning

This is how Jamie Nguyen and I looked at about 12:15am Thursday Morning! Dead tired, but still in a goofy mood. We had spent the previous 2 days finishing off Jamie's year supply and doing about 6 months of my years supply. On Tuesday afternoon, we went to the cannery to pick up the sealer and supplies. Needless to say the people at the cannery were very intrigued by these 2 women putting together supplies to do 71 cases worth of food! We were amazed that yes, you can fit 60 cases in one minivan!! They asked Jamie if we had a truck for all this stuff. Nope, just 2 good ol' minivans! ;)


We learned alot on Tuesday. We got back to Jamie's, unpacked, and set everything up. It took a bit to figure out our "system". We very quickly learned our strengths and weaknesses! :) Jaime is awesome at the Sealer, while I am the winner at "packing the cans perfectly" and getting the most packed in each can!


Wednesday was the big day to do as much as we could! Michelle Haneberg came over and helped. She had some flour and sugar to do and it was alot of fun. (See, even with a baby, it can be done!) Jaime had already been up and done a ton with her girls helping. She is so awesome! (We had been a little worried that we might have to leave before this was finished for a funeral in Utah. Thanks to Jaime, no worries!)


Here are Emily and Anna putting labels on the cans. And all the girls helping break spaghetti and pack the cans. NOTE: While I chose spaghetti and Angel Hair pasta because my family loves this. I do not recommend it for food storage as it was quite a job getting it into the cans and is a BIG MESS!! Macaroni, rigatoni, orzo, oh, there are so many other much EASIER pastas to can! You live and learn, right? (It was fun with the girls, though!)


While I was working with the girls on the Spaghetti, Jaime let the little ones help her fill the Navy Beans! Ian kept a few of the beans saying that they were his "treasure". They were all such good helpers and were REALLY Patient through 2 really long days!


When the guys got home from work, we had all of my stuff complete! Here we are feeling very accomplished!! They got the fun job of loading the cars to take home! THANKS, GUYS!
Spence took our kids home and Thi took theirs out to eat and we were off working again to finish Jaime's stuff. I think the men thought we were crazy, but we were so close to being finished that we didn't want to add on a whole other day of working. We'd rather finish no matter how late and clean it all up and be done! So Jaime and I stayed up and finally finished by about midnight. It really was loads of fun and we started getting a little goofy about 11pm. So here we are quite tired.

I have to say that this was such a great experience for me. I know that this is going to bless our family. And I know that the Lord really blessed us along the way to get it done and to save us money. It amazes me how He helps us to do the things He commands!