Raspberry jam

There are a few things about raspberries that I truly enjoy. I love picking them at the end of the day when they are ripe and warm from the hot summer sun. I love watching Emily searching for raspberries in our raspberry patch and then working hard to pick everything she's found, ripe or not. And, I love spreading fresh raspberry jam on homemade bread.

Then, there's the fact that when I was around 8 weeks pregnant with Emily, James and I started calling her "Raspberry" because all of the pregnancy books said she looked like a raspberry around then. It's funny how pregnancy books always compare babies to fruit in the beginning. We even joked around about naming our little girl "Raspberry," which is cute, but we're not granola enough to try something like that.

It's nice that a simple, little fruit can rouse so many happy thoughts and memories.

Canning green beans (by myself!)

It seems like I've helped my mom can green beans every year for as long as I can remember. I liked that she was in charge of the pressure cooker, and I just had to help snap beans and fill jars. Well, she decided to go on vacation this week and my garden decided to produce enough green beans to can. So, I borrowed her canner and decided to try it out. My mom and dad had a canning accident when I was two or three that put both of them in a hospital for a while, so I have a healthy (I think) fear of pressure cookers. I sent James and my daughter out of the house while I canned in case it exploded. Thankfully, everything went well and I now have eight pints of green beans. Needless to say, I'm very pleased with how it went.