I DON'T KNOW WHY I BOTHER!

Don't even bother reading this...it's long and depressing.

Our neighbors gave us some of the most wonderful apples on the planet and my busy little brain--and I emphasise the "little" part--decided it was time to can Apple Pie Filling.

One year, the kids and I canned over 50 quarts in the fall. They stuck with me until we were all finished and at one point--one of the favorite memories stored in my little brain--is when Trent picked up a double handful of the peelings--picture a pile of those about a foot high--and threw them in the air and yelled, "Happy New Year!" Gosh, I love that kid. (Well, he's a man with a wife and 7 kids but to me he will always be a kid.)So, today I watched things I had recorded on TV--The Event, House, NCIS, Katie Brown Workshop, 16 minutes of Studio 5 about photography, and other things that my tiny little brain cannot recall at the moment--while I peeled apples, but right from the start things went wrong.

I spilled apples all over the floor and the noise of the stainless steel, pan hitting the floor, annoyed people two blocks away, and permanently damaged my hearing.

Then I couldn't remember how to load the apple peeler and so had to peel and slice a lot of the apples by hand. Then, my brain--the little one--kicked in and remembered how to do it right.

I think the highlight of my day was seeing previews of the movie "Unstoppable,"......with Denzel Washington......and it's rated PG 13. Hooray! (We don't go to "R" rated movies.)Lookit, there are men running on top of trains......and trains crashing......and trains blowing up and school kids on a field trip and other exciting things.Which is more than the excitement of my apple pie filling boiling over and six out of eighteen of the jars NOT SEALING because of the boiling over bit and even the sight of all this bounteous beauty cannot mend my broken heart about 1/3 of my efforts a failure. Another day, another failure.

Phil opened one of the non-sealed ones and ate it over ice cream and said he didn't care if any of them sealed as he would eat them all, one after another, on ice cream, and it was the tastiest stuff in the world. He's nice like that and my love for him grew some more, if that were even possible, because I am already rather fond of him.

And so, now six quarts will have to find a spot in the fridge or freezer. I hope we can go see "Unstoppable" (hopefully soon) to mend my wounded heart, but right now I'm going to go have a good cry in my huge pillow--pronounced "pilla"--and know that tomorrow will be a better day. Hopefully. And because it's Sunday, I will have a nice Sunday nap after church.

I should have consulted The Damsel from Old School--she knows how to do everything and she even has a blog of the 50 best canning sites, which I looked at--too late, but I did look at them--and did you know you can can bacon? (Or maybe "can can" is a dance. I should ask The Damsel.) And did you know you can can rabbit and squirrel? (They do a lot of that in Minnesota, I guess.) And there is even an article--thanks Damsel--about Mormon Food Storage Techniques. I should definitely have gone there first as this Mormon was not doing things right.

If you have had a recent failure would you please tell me so I can know that I'm not the only one in the whole wide world that does things inadequately. Thanks so much.

And come on over. I'll give you some apple pie filling with ice cream underneath.

PS Knock loud, because I might not hear you because of my damaged hearing. And if I don't answer the door just stick you head in and yell, "Yo-hoo." (There's not enough yo-hooing done now-a-days.) But if it's on a Sunday after church, I'll be napping, so you might have to get in the fridge and get your own.

PPS I have never actually made an apple pie with the 100's of jars of apple pie filling I've made over the years. We just heat it up and eat it as a side dish. You should make some--that is if you can can successfully--or dance, either. I'll put the recipe on my cookbook blog soon.

APPLE OATMEAL CRISP

Made this yesterday. It was very good. I forgot to take a picture of it before we gobbled it all up so I had to have another spoonful to photograph. Poor me, having to eat another spoonful.

Recipe here.

MY ABC'S OF GRATITUDE--A THROUGH D

I am going to post A to Z, things I'm grateful for. We'll see how far I get today.

A--Artichokes. I love artichokes but they have to be dipped in mayonnaise, lots of mayonnaise so I guess I will not love artichokes as much as I used to when mayonnaise was considered (by my cousin, Jim, who used to eat mayonnaise sandwiches) a food group. In fact, I will not eat artichokes at all so I guess I will not love artichokes but maybe will love armadillos, instead. I don't know why. I just think they are cool and there is that new commercial about the armadillo who gets so frightened he rolls into a ball and his wife knocks on his shell and says something like, "Honey, it's all right, you can come out now." Is it a Capitol One commercial?

B--Baths. I gave my kids baths every night before bed. They smelled so good and were so warm and clean and when I tucked them in I breathed in their cleanness.

I loved baths as a kid. I would stay in the bathtub for an hour, emptying and refilling the water as needed to keep it steaming hot.

Now, there isn't time for baths? (I have to blog, after all.) And, not so much of me is submersible. Who wants to see large portions of the anatomy sticking out of the water? So I do not love baths as much as I used to. Or at all.

I will love the color Black--for "B"-- instead, which goes so well with white pants but winter is coming and the white pants will have to be put away so even black isn't as much fun as it used to be.

I wonder, is anything as much fun as it used to be?

C--Conference. Tomorrow is our semi-annual General Conference--two hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon, broadcast from Salt Lake City for us to watch on TV,--and the same on Sunday. We hear talks from our Prophet and the General Authorities. These two weekends (1st weekend in April and October) are my favorite ones of the year.

Tomorrow, during Conference I think I will have to make some chili sauce out of my very ripe tomatoes. I will watch Conference while I work.

One year the kids and I made apple pie filling during General Conference. We made a huge apple mess in the kitchen and Kraut threw apple peelings all over us and yelled, "Happy New Year." We laughed and laughed. It is one of my finest memories. I don't think we listened to much conference but we did have the TV on all the time. We bottled over 60 quarts of apple pie filling and it was delicious but we didn't make one apple pie with it. We heated it as a side dish. Maybe Apples should be my "A" word.

D--Dessert. I have a friend who, in her personal computer cookbook, has more dessert recipes than all other items, doubled or even tripled. I love to look at pictures of desserts on cookbook sites. Because of the nature of what happens to the body when you eat desserts, I don't eat them much. See "B" above about why eating lots of desserts and then having baths are not a good idea.

So, maybe I will forgo being grateful for Desserts to being grateful for Dogs, which we do not have. We used to. His name was Sebastian and he was Lord Bumhampton's dog. When Lord Bumhampton grew up and left home he left his dog here.

Sebastian was an obedient dog. He loved to howl at fire engines and ambulances. I would go to the bathroom window in the middle of the night and tell him he could not howl, and he would howl-whimper, and then I would tell him again and he would just whimper. He wanted to howl so much but he acquiesced to my wishes and muttered, in a high pitched sissy sort of way, deep in his throat, but didn't howl.

After he died, I often found Phil, standing at the slider in the kitchen, just looking out at the back yard. He'd say, in a quiet little voice, "My dog died." It broke my little heart.

So, I'm grateful for one very funny dog who wanted to be in the house so bad that he laid on the top step in the dead of winter, with ice on his fur, shivering almost off the step, instead of going into his HEATED dog house because he thought there might be a chance we'd let him in.

Which we did.