Guest Blogging... Silk Purse and Sow's Ear

I love love love when my friends blog.  And even better when they blog about things I adore, like vintage anything, and such self-sufficient activities as sewing and crafting, cooking and canning, and this whole blog is dedicated to just that. Meet Robin, of Silk Purse and Sow's Ear. She is not only a fellow homesick Texan, but an amazing friend and I've had the pleasure of knowing her from both of our past lives to our better places now, which encompasses most of my New York City life. 

I wanted to showcase one of her recent posts about canning and putting back because it's something I've dabbled with and one of these days, when I'm actually home, I too will be turning my apartment into a mini canning factory and finally making good use of my storage space... all I need is time *sigh*. But until then, check out her own canning adventures as well as her blog as a whole.

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Canning Day

On Saturday, the church ladies gathered to do some canning in our beloved church kitchen.

two types of brine - one savory and the other sweet

sliced cucumbers

Canning in a church kitchen provides an amazing amount of room,  enormous pots, and an industrial dishwasher!  I don’t know how I’ll ever can any other way!

The most exciting element of the day was getting my hands on my favorite vegetable: okra.  I adore pickled okra.  In fact when I went home and cleaned out my cupboards to make space for all of the new jars, I found *gasp* TWO jars of picked okra that I’d hidden from myself!  If I could I would eat the jars immediately – thus some prudent part of myself tricked me into restraint!

Now I have two more jars that are ready to eat TODAY!  Like RIGHT NOW!  You see, the problem with pickling is that you have to wait at least six weeks before you eat the take, or it won’t be that good. The dear okra pods below won’t be consumed until early fall!

beautiful whole okra

What a handsome helper!

Cousin John's Jam

After all of that – an exhausting 6 hours of canning – I wiped the sweat off of my brow and finished Colette Patterns’ Sorbetto Top!

Miss Robin's Sorbetto Top

I think it came out really great!  I’m working toward making more of my own clothes and hope to have a few additional items to show in the coming weeks.

What was your Saturday like?