Time to Reconnect ... and Can

On our way home from "Up North", we spent the night at the Casino RV Park in Hinckley. Since they have the world's best wild rice soup, we walked over to the casino for some. While there, we ran into Jim and Ellen who live in Queen Valley, Arizona. They were only at the park for a few days after visiting Jim's mom in Duluth; what are the chances we would see them - great coincidence. Jim was my boss years ago and we have tried to stay connected over the years. It was fun to share stories with them.

The next day, we stopped in North Branch to visit our former neighbors, Jack and Lucille. We talked about visiting them at their Texas residence this winter. It was great to reconnect.



From there, we went to White Bear and had lunch with Sara, a gal we have "adopted" - she and I used to work together. A couple of hours of lunch and conversation brought us back in touch with each other.



And then, it was back at our Southern Minnesota Campground. Since coming back, we have shared food and a couple of rounds of golf with Bob and Corky and today I reconnected with Adrienne. She was kind enough to share some of the produce from their garden with me...

(The hot peppers actually came from my "2-pot patio garden". ) So today, it was canning: salsa that will be used in cooking all winter long.

These jars are now added to the Jalapeno Jelly I made earlier in the week. That is "Grandma's Pot" , Barry, pressed into service for the fall canning ritual.
I also did some canning at mom's these past days; she now has 14 pints of tomatoes ready to be added to hot dishes. When I was a little girl the canning season lasted a long time and included canning peaches and pears and apples for pie and applesauce and corn and squishing tomatoes into juice and making some jelly with orange slices and rhubarb and ... probably lots of other things I have forgotten . And when my mom was little, she helped her mom with canning. She told me a story this week of one time when grandma was peeling onions to go into something she was canning and the onions were so strong that she was crying. Well it seems that a traveling salesman came to their door and when grandma went to the door in tears , he offered his sympathy. Mom said it was funny when he realized she was just cutting up onions. Canning is a good tradition and is, in itself, a way to reconnect.

It has been a good week!