"Bright Idea"

Have you ever noticed that when you have some extra time off that you suddenly come up with all these “bright ideas” of things you can do? This happened to me Fourth of July weekend where I had full three days off. Even though I had already planned to help my daughter rearrange her room, and had to help prepare for my family’s Fourth of July barbeque; I had one of these “bright ideas” that I should try canning as well. As if I wasn’t busy already, I didn’t care; my thoughts were full of how cool it would be to make my own jams, pickles, and tomato sauce and of how my kids and I could do this together. Wouldn’t this be fun!

The first canning project I wanted to try was strawberry preserves. I went out and bought everything I needed, strawberries, lemons, sugar and the special jam jars to begin my first attempt at making and canning strawberry preserves. When I brought home all of these supplies, my husband was really excited because strawberries are his favorite fruit. He calls them the “Fruit of the Gods.” Of course the first question out of his mouth was “Ooh, strawberries! Can we eat these?” So I had to threaten my husband that I would have to hurt him if he touched any of the strawberries I had bought for MY strawberry preserves. As I feverishly started reading all about how to make preserves, I was getting so excited. According to the book, the first thing you must do before canning is to make sure you are working in a clean and sanitary environment. So in Michelle language, which is when my OCD tendencies tend to show their ugly head, means I needed to deep clean my kitchen before I could even think about making my preserves.

Well I knew I had committed myself to helping my daughter first. So on Saturday as we started working on rearranging my daughter’s room, my other two children decided to have a “bright idea” of their own and rearrange their room as well. So there was my Saturday… up to my elbows in trash bags full of things to get rid of and trash. The next day was Sunday, so that was when I got to “clean” my kitchen. When Monday came, I was too tired to do anything and I still had to prepare food for my family’s barbeque. That’s when I decided to toss this “canning” idea out the window because I was just crazy. And so I never did make my strawberry preserves. If fact the strawberries just went bad. So after my 3 day weekend I ended up with a very upset husband for wasting strawberries he could have eaten, a spotless kitchen, children with clean rooms, which is rare, and no strawberry preserves… so much for my “bright idea”.