I am awesome

This is a post to tell you how awesome I am.

Yes, it's a post about canning.

I know lots of people who do more canning than me and they don't feel the need to get on Facebook or write a blog about it like I do.

I know I'm a little silly that way.

But this time, really, I am awesome.

I will tell you why.

I canned chili.

Chili con carne.

And, here's the important part, I don't eat chili!

I hate beans and I can't tolerate things that are too spicy so chili really is out of the question.

But Frank loves the stuff.

Gee, what an amazing wife I am to spend a whole day making something just to make my husband happy.

(Is anyone agreeing with me yet?)

I have made big batches of chili before and frozen it in single serving sizes just for Frank

but the freezer is full and he really wanted some in long term storage so...since I spent the weekend away having a fun football get away, I told him we could spent Monday finally getting his chili made.

Frank filled his garden with all of the ingredients that he would need to make some homemade chili.

We have onions, peppers, hot peppers and tomatoes.  Tons of all of them.

After cutting and cleaning the produce that we needed for the chili, we continued cutting and cleaning until we had dealt with all of our currently ripe produce.

I ended up with several containers of diced tomatoes and lots of hot peppers for the freezer.

It was an all day project I can tell you.

And because we are the way we are and incapable of doing anything small, we made a quadruple batch of chili.

It ended up being 33 jars plus enough leftover to freeze 5 servings as well.

I have a hard time going through all the work of canning for 7 jars of something.

I mean, really, if I'm going to do all that work and effort, I want a bunch of stuff at the end of the day.

Someday I should try just canning a small batch of something.  

Maybe it wouldn't be so much work and I would find that I liked it.

And maybe I would be able to do some thing else in that day besides can.

It was a team effort since we had to chop and clean so many tomatoes, onions and peppers.

And then there was the 12 pounds of hamburger to brown.

Oy!

This is only half of the hamburger and this is my ginormous canning pot.  It's a LOT of hamburger. My arms were killing me from all the stirring!

We even soaked and cooked our beans.

I have never soaked beans before so I learned something new!

Thank you Internet.

Anyway, we got it all done and had a good time doing it together.

I finished the last canner load after 10 PM

but it feels good to know that if I don't want to cook dinner

(and let's be honest, do I ever want to cook dinner?)

 I can send Frank to get a can of chili for himself and I am OFF THE HOOK!

And I can do this 33 times!

That right there makes it worth it.

And just for your viewing pleasure, here is a shot of what my kitchen looks like when I am canning:

I literally use every bowl and pan that I own and its a total disaster.

My kitchen still hasn't recovered.