Canning Chicken

They had chicken on sale at Macey's for 1.19 a pound. You had to buy 40 lbs, it came all in one box. There were four separate bags inside. So I got some on Tuesday. I had to cut all the fat and stuff off of it. So Wednesday morning I started and only got about 10 lbs. cut, then I started to get hungry and sick feeling from the poultry smell. So I stopped and did some more later after work. Wednesday night I went to my moms right after work and cut some more and started the canning process. It is alot easier canning when you have a gas stove. I had to wear my apron, so I did not get any chicken goo on me.

For canning chicken all you have to do here in Utah is cut the chicken into strips. I washed the canning jars in the dishwasher so they were freshly clean. I squished the chicken in the pint size jars to about an inch from the top. You don't need to add water. They will make their own juice while cooking. Then you put the lids on and put them in the pressure cooker with a couple of inches of water on the bottom. The first batch I did, I got 18 pint jars in the canner. After all the jars are in the canner, put the lid on and latch it down. The stove should already be on. The vent at the top should be open and once the steam starts coming out really good, then you set the timer for 10 minutes. After the ten minutes, just pop the vent down and start watching the pressure, get it up to 13 and a 1/2 pounds and then set your timer for 75 minutes. Whoa! Get a chair out and sit down, it is going to be a long time.

This is the part I remember as a kid when my mom would sit a stool in front of the stove and watch the pressure gauge. You cannot let it get below 13 1/2 lbs. or you have to start the time over. You don't want it to get to high either.


So, here I sat for an hour and a half last night watching this gauge.

During this process, my mom had gone to class and so my dad made some spaghetti for dinner. There was some french bread leftover from a previous dinner so he decided to make garlic bread. He buttered and seasoned the bread and I turned on the broiler to LOW, and moved the rack up. We stuck it in and a little later I realized somebody better check it(you really should watch it, doesn't take very long), I asked my sister to check on it and you probably guessed it. They were a blazing, my dad rushed in and pulled them out of the oven and blew the flames out and ran outside. The smoke detectors did not even go off. Amazing! Well, no garlic bread for dinner. That is okay, everything else was good.

When the 75 minutes were up, I turned off the stove and my dad moved the pressure cooker to another burner to cool down. This takes a little while. Probably about a half an hour. When the pressure gets down to zero, I took a fork and lifted the vent a little to see if there was any pressure left inside, there wasn't, so I lifted the vent all the way up and waited two minutes. I then lifted the lid off and lifted all the jars out to cool down and seal. They all sealed, yeah!
From start to finish it took around 3 hours. Today is Thursday and I just finished the last of the chicken and got 16 more jars full. I had never thought I would cut up so much chicken and I am glad I am finished. I also thought I was done canning this year, I think now I am really done for the year.

Here is all 34 jars of canned chicken!

Cute

I found this cute stuffed animal at Sams Club the other day and just had to get it for when we have kids. It is built to sit on and can hold up to 140 lbs. of weight. I love it!

Fun with our nephew

My sister in law came down for some photo shoots and brought her son, he was able to stay the night of the 17th with us and we had so much fun having him over. Saturday morning we were expecting to wake up around 6:30, and I was surprised to wake up at 7:40 and Brian was still asleep so we went in and woke him up. We asked what he wanted for breakfast and he said waffles, so waffles it was. As I was making waffles Mike(Robs brother) came over and ate breakfast with us, they had fun playing MarioKart, and then we headed to the park with Robs gas powered remote control truck. That truck moves fast. Brian loved to just run after the truck, even though he never could catch it with it moving so fast.

We also played on the playground. The only slide he went down was the blue twisty slide, the others were still wet from the cold mornings.

Mike left about 12:40 to pick up Heidi from class. We then made Brian a PB and J sandwich with some apples. We went outside and Brian had fun going back and forth to what I was doing and what Rob was doing. I got a lot of my garden taken out with Brian's encouragement that I was doing good. When Rob and I were putting up some stuff to seal the garage door Brian was entertaining himself. He had fun finding rocks and then cleaning them off with the water in the back and then lining them up in a row. He had a process that they go threw of drying. It was fun.

Then we sat out on the lawn and ate an icee watching for Grandma Taylor to come. Grandma Taylor played Mario Cart with Brian and they had fun, then grandma had to leave so Brian continued to play. It was time for dinner so we asked Brian what he wanted, he didn't want spaghetti, but he saw a box of hamburger helper in the cupboard and decided he would like that. So, we made the Bacon Cheeseburger Hamburger helper. I also made some corn. He ate it all up and then mom came and Brian was sad to go. We had a fun day. We were able to talk with Heather for a while and then they headed home. Thanks for a fun day Brain.

Girls Night with my mom and sisters!

A month ago my sister wanted to see the play "Little Women" and she wanted to get tickets early so we could get good seats. So, last night my mom drove and picked all of us up and we went to Firehouse for dinner. I love Firehouse. I got there garden salad with foccocia bread. Yum. After dinner, we headed to the Theatre and found our seats. We sat on Grand Tier 5, the front balcony to the side. I really enjoyed the play and even almost cried in a few parts. The play ended a little after 10:00p.m. We decided we would head over to Maceys to get a ice cream cone and got there and they were closed up. So we wandered around and it was getting late so we were acting silly. It was late so we headed home. My youngest sister was sitting in the front seat(she is the smallest), and I was sitting in the middle in the back with my other two sisters. Squishy, Squishy, we had a good night and it was fun to get together and chat and enjoy each others company. If you want to see a good play, then go see "Little Women," plays until the 27th.

Garden is No More

Our garden is officially dead. As of Friday morning's frost, everything died. The only thing that was still thriving were our zucchini plants, and we already had a ton of zucchini in the house so I just let it go.

Most zucchini recipes call for two cups grated zucchini, so I grated all the zucchini and put them into bags. I ended up with 8 bags of zucchini. Whoa! So I found a zucchini recipe and made a batch. It turned out really good. I got six small loaves from one batch. Yum.

This week must have been my bread making week, thursday night I made wheat bread (did not rise very well, but still tasted good), and Friday morning I made Oatmeal bread, and then yesterday afternoon, I made zucchini bread while it was super windy and snowy/rainy outside.

Crazy 8's

8 Favorite TV SHOWS... (don't have TV, but I do have a few I love to watch)
1 - MONK
2 - Psych
3 - Chuck
4 - Stargate Atlantis

8 Favorite MOVIES. . .
1 - Iron Man
2 - The Princess Bride
3 - Enchanted
4 - August Rush
5 - Chronicles of Narnia
6 - Anastasia
7 - Monsters Inc.
8 - Cars
Love good disney movies!

8 Favorite RESTAURANTS . . .
1 - Costa Vida - shredded chicken salad mmmmmm. . .
2 - El Sol - whenever my family went out, this is where we went.
3 - Chili's - guiltless chicken sandwhich with fresh veggies and black beans, so good.
4 - Papa Johns - favorite pizza place
5 - Subway
Thats All

8 things that HAPPENED YESTERDAY . . .
1 - Took TONS of cucumbers to my parents house, and left with more than half of them.
2 - Made a dental checkup appointment.
3 - Watched Chuck with Robert!
4 - I exercised while Rob watched Heroes (not into that show at all)
5 - Hung two paintings I bought for the kitchen. Took forever to get them both evenly aligned.
6 - Rob was so happy and excited!!!!!
7 - Went to work
8 - Shopped at Ross, did not find anything.

8 things I'm LOOKING FORWARD TO . . .
1 - Thanksgiving
2 - Christmas
3 - handing candy out on Halloween
4 - Spending time with family
5 - Spending a weekend away with my hubby.
6 - Rob says : flying his helicopter
7 - Rob says: getting things back to normal
8 - Rob says: receiving a package in the mail that he has been waiting for.

8 things I love about FALL . . .
1 - crinkle of leaves under my feet
2 - crispness in the air
3 - Apple crisp
4 - wearing layers of clothes
5 - going shopping for winter clothes
6 - spending time with family
7 - cuddling up in a blanket with a good movie, and my husband
8 - all the changing colors

8 things on my WISH LIST . . .
1 – Repainting our basement family room.
2 – Getting furniture for our basement family room.
3 – A BAby
4 – An organized house that stays organized. (and clean)
5 – "Salt Lake Temple with red leaves" painting for above my mantle.
6 – Blinds and Drapes for my family room window.
7 – Panoramic Logan Temple picture
8 – New clothes

8 people I TAG . . . 1. Whoever!

Yummy Salsa

Last year when we got so many tomatoes from our garden we didn't plant, we made salsa. I made two batches last year with having 5 tomato plants. This year, we planted 3 tomato plants, so as not to get tons of tomatoes. Well, I have so far made 4 batches of salsa (I use about 18 or so tomatoes in every batch) and there are still more tomatoes. I have given quite a bit of salsa away also.

The recipe I have used for my salsa I found on allrecipes.com, I love it, it is called Phyl's Salsa. Although I have made some small alterations to the recipe. It calls for 10 large tomatoes. The smaller tomatoes I usually count as 2, but in all I probably just average around 16 to 18 tomatoes. I peel them and deseed and dejuice them. And instead of 4 fresh jalepeno peppers, I use the red jalepeno peppers, I don't know if it makes that much difference, but that is what I do. I also don't quite know what a banana pepper is, so I found the closest thing that I thought it was. A yellow chili pepper, bananas are yellow and this was the only pepper that was yellow, and looked like a banana. Anyways, it tastes good.


When it has simmered for an hour I let it sit for awhile and cool down and then I take one of those stick blenders and blend it up so there are no large chunks. I like it better this way and it also coats the chip better.
Enjoy!

SOOOOOOOO Happy!!

Just wanted to post about how we are doing! This picture sums it up just about right! We are doing great, you become stronger and closer through the trials and struggles you go through in life and we definitely have seen this with us.

Jam anyone?

We had to travel down to Salt Lake on Sept 4, so we stopped in Brigham City to get peaches, since peach days were Sept 5 and 6th. We got 2 half bushels of peaches. We gave some away and have been eating peaches and I decided I wanted to make some peach jam. I also had some strawberries, so I made some Peach-Strawberry jam, and some plain peach jam. Whoa, I made 5 batches of jam and got about 50 8oz. jars of jam. Whoa! Just getting a head start on my Christmas gifts.

I still had peaches left over and so I peeled and pitted all the remaining peaches and my mom helped me can 7 quart jars. And we still had enough to munch on for a few days. Oh, they were so juicy and good, mmmmmm.

The only thing I don't like about cooking and making things is the cleanup that always comes afterwords. Somebody's got to do it.

A Fun Evening!

Last night we were able to go out to Chili's for dinner with Robs parents and his brother and sister with their spouses. We had yummy food and I always love getting together and chatting. Afterwards we played some mini golf. It was so exciting to get out and do something, we had been wanting to go miniature golfing for a while. Thanks to Robs parents and my brother and sister in laws for a great night.
The weather has also been just fabulous. Temp's in the 70's, 80's. Cool mornings! It has been so nice, I love this weather, the start of fall.