Kathleeen

Thanks for the hug! I've been kind of preoccupied, my daughter and I were diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos, a hypermobility condition, this past November. She also has fibromyalgia, and her EDS is much worse than mine. She's been in and out of hospitals and doctors for various injuries since 6th grade. Me, now I know why I have "trick ankles" and a bad back at my age. Both off us get a lot of pain from it, her moreso. But, life goes on, and the tomatoes will grow

I put up a dozen or so quarts of potatoes. I've tried a couple times to make mashed potates out of them and they come out rather rubbery and grainy, What do you do with your home canners to serve them for the table, and make them nice?

I have ten quarts of freshly made beef broth in the fridge, but I have 5 jars. Ooops!

On the amish thing.. My family are from a conservative Mennonite background, I'm the first generation that was raised with no living relatives still using horse and buggy and living off the grid. All the food preservation horror stories I have heard came after they stopped canning and producing their own food. Bad ice cream killed my mother's triplet sister in 1922, and my own sister has had several cases of tomaine in her family from stuff she froze or left sitting out too long. Honestly, I have to wonder if my niece thawed things and put them back in the freezer being a ditzy teen, it happened so often there for a while. Of course we don't know what people died of years and years ago, especially in Amish and Mennonite communites, medicine, record keeping and testing was not what it is today.