Spaghetti Sauce and a Death

Well, do you want the good news or the bad news first? Good news, ok!

I found a great Amish store just down the road from me! I never I did know it was there but just had never been to it. Well now I'll be going often. Here in the mid-west Amish are bountiful and there is this wonderful little town in Indiana called Shipshewanna. A flea market lovers dream come true. In Shipshe (short for Shipshewanna) there is an awesome Amish bulk food store called E & S Sales. I love going going into this store if nothing else but to get a big bulk bag of candy. Well there is a mini version just down the road! Now I can go get chocolate chips, flour, sugar, baked goodies, wooden crafts, and much more. I love it!

After the bulk store we were on our way to the Miller's Vegetable stand. This is another local Amish family who has produce, but more importantly boxes of tomatoes for canning that they sell for $7. This is a 1/2 bushel of tomatoes. On our crappy bathroom scale they weighed just over 25 pounds! So I made spaghetti sauce. The recipe called for 20 pounds so I used the bathroom scale again. The recipe said I would get 10 pint jars. Sounded good to me until I discovered that my scale must be way off! I ended up with 19 pint jars. I'm oh so glad I decided to double up on the spices. We tried a little nibble and it's wonderful. I can't wait to have spaghetti this fall/winter.



And I still have a ton of tomatoes left. These I'm just going to chop up and can them that way. We love having chili during the winter and these tomatoes will go fast, I'm sure.




Now for the bad news. Brace yourselves. I discovered that my camera can not be repaired. I knew should have known this day would come. I bought my camera on Black Friday back in 2007. It was a discontinued model, that's why it was on sale. For like $100 off. How could I pass it up? Well a discontinued camera 2 years ago means the parts to fix it are way discontinued in 2009. So I'm left using our crappy old camera. It sucks! Just look at the picture I tried to take of the dead camera. It's blurry. And stinks! So I'm going to place the dead Kodak on ebay. I've found some cameras being sold as-is that are actually going for pretty good prices. Anything is better than nothing. And if it doesn't sell I'll just stick it in a box and wait for the day that it becomes an antique and I can make mega bucks!

So I'm trying to decide what type of camera to get. I need something with an awesome zoom, this one was 10x and I loved it. I'd love to have a SLR but I really don't think a basic version/lense will zoom that well. Plus I don't have a ton of money to spend. Any suggestions? What kind of camera do you have? Do you like it?



Dad wanted a picture with his little girl. Even though it's with the shitty camera I thought it turned out pretty stinkin' cute. She's getting so tall, and Dad is ecstatic! He's hoping for a basketball star like himself. She could be it.

Canning

I'm so glad canning is becoming a popular thing again, maybe I'm just getting old enough to appreciate it now. Who knows? I love it though whatever the reasoning. I really like knowing what is in the food I'm feeding my family. I'm not a freak about it, but something fresh from the garden is better that something from the can any day.

I bought a 1/2 bushel of tomatoes from a local Amish veggie/fruit stand today and made a batch of salsa and a batch of spaghetti sauce. I still have plenty of tomatoes and plan to make some more salsa and maybe some soup tomorrow.

After talking to my mom I think I'd like to try and can some sweet corn also. To me store bought canned corn just doesn't taste as well as yummy corn on/off the cob. I'd also like to can some apple pie filling once apples are ready. I love me a yummy apple pie. Just call me Betty Crocker!

Sooo....here's the canned goods: {You know I had to make some cute labels too! :) }

Spaghetti Sauce

Salsa

Cutie labels

I've got to admit, I feel like the spaghetti sauce was done fraudulently. It was a packet/mix thing that I just had to add the tomatoes to. I did spice it up a notch by adding a few of my own spices so I guess that makes it less fraudulent. Maybe? Right? I'll be sure to let you all know how they all taste.