We’ve Been Canning Red Beets Again

Late summer is the time of year we process the red beets we grow in our garden boxes. Do you know where red beets come from? Do you like to eat red beets? Since I shared this experience with you last year, I’m sharing last year’s post again for anyone that might have an interest in learning more about this yummy healthy vegetable. Here we go! 🙂

You’ve probably seen red beets and even eaten them. I’m guessing you bought them from the store in a can like this:

But do you know where red beets come from? Have you ever seen a red beet plant? We grew our own red beets this year in one of our garden boxes. (The orange flowers you can see are Marigolds which can help keep bugs away from the red beet plants.)

The red beets grow under ground and then they are dug or pulled up. Here’s a closer look at the plants and what you can see above ground.

This is what one red beet looks like when it’s taken out of the ground.

A raw red beet is hard and is best eaten cooked. There is a process to follow if you want to cook red beets. First you cut off the top leaves, but it’s important to leave about 1-2″ of the stem intact. And you don’t cut off the roots. If the roots or the stem are cut off, the color will bleed out of the red beet when its cooked.

We sprayed the red beets outside with the water hose in order to remove the biggest part of the dirt from them. Then they were taken into our kitchen and put in the sink.

Next they are washed by hand and put into a large pot.

Water is added to the pot so that the red beets are all covered with water.

The water is brought to a boil and the red beets are cooked until the skin of the red beet will slide off the outside of the beet. The beets are then put into a large pan of cold water so they can cool. Once they are cool enough to be handled without burning your hands, each beet is gently “squeezed” and the skin, the root and the stem will slip right off.

And ta dah, there is your red beet ready for eating or canning into jars.

We canned or preserved our red beets so we will be able to eat them all through the winter time. In order to can the beets, they are cut into smaller pieces.

The red beets are packed into special glass canning jars and some salt and boiling water is added. A two piece set of a metal lid and a metal ring and placed on the top of each jar. Then the jars are processed in a pressure canner for a while. When the right amount of time has passed, the canner slowly cools down and once the pressure is gone, the jars of beets can be removed. As the jars cool, the metal lid will seal and that is what makes it safe to keep the red beets for a longer time on a shelf.

That is an abbreviated version of the canning process, so if you ever can red beets yourself, be sure to follow the instructions that come with your pressure canner. 🙂 Now you know where red beets come from! I hope you’ve enjoyed learning more about red beets!

Let’s Take a Walk Together

The days of summer are slowly coming to an end, though the temperatures here this week have felt very warm! Let’s take a walk in nature together and see what fun things we can find. I call this “finding joy in nature and in the simple free things in life”. If you have a camera or a cell phone with a camera, take some pictures of the interesting things you find. Kids love to take pictures of special things. 🙂 I’ll show you some of the cool things I found on my walks in nature lately.

It can be fun to see how many different colors of wild flowers or weed flowers you can find. Here is a light blue flower that grows along the roadside where we live.

You can also make a note of what size the flowers are that you see. For instance, these little yellow flowers are very small.

While the yellow flowers on this plant are quite large.

Here we have a little feather that I almost missed seeing, but look how pretty and soft it is!

This is a dandelion whose days of being yellow are gone and all that’s left are the seeds. But look how pretty and perfect it looks! Some people call these “wish flowers” because they pick the flower, make a wish and then blow all the seeds and their wishes into the air.

These tiny, tiny pink flowers are on a weed, but they are so delicate and pretty!

We even found a little friend hopping through the grass!

We added another color of flower to our list when we found this purple weed!

And who do we have here? Why hello, there, little caterpillar! You can make up a story about where the caterpillar came from and where he is heading now. Why is he running so quickly through the grass? 🙂

These flowers were also growing along the roadside but they look very much like the Black-eyed Susans that are growing in my flowerbed.

Keep an eye out for butterflies! We have lots of these little ones flying around our house. I think this might be a Great Spangled Fritillary butterfly. So pretty!

You never know when you might spot a man raking hay… 😉

Taking a walk in nature can be so refreshing and calming and gets you away from screen time and gives you quality time together. You can take it a step further and print out your pictures and make a scrapbook together. I hope you’ll take a few minutes out of your busy last-of-summer days and enjoy some time outside. 🙂

An Adorable Update for You

Hello, again! Just wanted to share a very adorable update with you that I think you might enjoy seeing! Earlier this week for Earth Day I posted some pictures from our nature walk. One of those pictures was this Robin’s nest with 4 eggs in it.

I checked on the nest yesterday and guess what?! Yes, the eggs have hatched! 🙂

Look at those tiny baby birds! Awww, it makes my heart soft and mushy just looking at their cuteness! 🙂 Just wanted to share them with you to brighten your day!

A Fall Walk in Nature

Well, Fall (or Autumn) is officially upon us! Fall can be such a beautiful time of year. Days and nights are often cooler and we can see things changing outside as our warm days of summer transition to Fall. Now is a great time to take a walk outside and see what things you can find. Here are a few things we found on our walk…

#1.) Toadstools. It’s always fun to imagine fairies or tiny creatures hiding under a toadstool in the rain.

#2.) Tiny wildflowers growing in the grass.

#3.) A lone dandelion…maybe the last one for this year.

#4.) A pile of brown dried leaves

#5.) Beautiful colored leaves

And the trees that still have the colorful leaves on them.

Maybe you will find a weird looking tree like this one with half of it having colorful leaves and half of the leaves that are still green.

#6.) And then there’s the bugs…like a grasshopper

#7.) A katydid

#8.) Or some creepy looking bugs…maybe a stink bug.

#9.) Plants whose flowers have died now

#10.) And plants that are still blooming with beautiful flowers!

#11.) Milkweed plants that are now spreading their seeds for next years plants.

You may find different things in nature than we found. Maybe some caterpillars or some pine cones, an interesting bird or another kind of bug. Whatever you find, I hope you will spend some time out enjoying nature this Fall! 🙂

A New Batch of Kittens!

For your reading enjoyment, here is a little story I wrote a few years ago about a wonderful experience I had as a child. 🙂

“Nita, wake up! It’s time!”

“What?” I said sleepily, struggling to get my eyes open. “Time for what?”

“Spice is having her kittens,” my mom replied. “Do you want to come and watch?”

Kittens! Oh, my, yes! Of course, I wanted to watch! As I scrambled out of the tangle of my covers, I realized it was still the middle of the night. Wow, I’d never been up at this time before! And just think…our very own kittens! I eagerly grabbed my pink bathrobe and matching slippers to ward off the October chill. I pushed my long brown hair back as I followed my mom down the darkened hallway to our dimly lighted kitchen. She cautioned me to move slowly and quietly so I wouldn’t startle Spice. Underneath our wooden kitchen table in a brown cardboard box was our beautiful calico cat. My two older sisters were already sitting on the linoleum floor when I knelt quietly down beside them. Dad appeared with my three brothers and soon all six of us kids were jostling for position around the box to take in this amazing sight.

“What’s that little thing Spice is licking?”, asked my younger brother, Mark, as we all peered into the box at a little egg-shaped blob lying beside our pet.

“It’s a kitten”, said Sherry, laughing. I guess since she was the oldest of us kids, she knew more about these things.

“It doesn’t look like a kitten”, said Mark doubtfully. I wanted to agree with him but with four older siblings sitting right there beside me, I decided to keep my thoughts to myself. How could that slimy looking thing be a kitten?

We watched in fascination as Spice licked and licked. Sure enough, as the slimy stuff was cleaned away, we began to see orange and white fur emerge. It WAS a kitten!

“Listen!”, said my sister, Susie. “Hear that? Spice has got her motor running!” We sat in total silence and listened to our new mama purr her happiness. When the tiny kitten let out a loud “Mew!”, we laughed softly at such a big sound coming from such a tiny baby.

We spent the next couple hours huddled drowsily together on the kitchen floor as Spice delivered five wiggly little bundles of fur. Our fingers itched to hold their silky softness, but Mom said we had to wait to hold them until they were a little older.

“We have a problem”, said my brother, Roger. “There are six of us and only five kittens. When we play with them, one of us won’t get to hold a kitten.”

My brother, Keith, the problem solver of the family, calmly remarked, “It works out just fine. This way, one of us will get to hold Spice.”

With that problem solved, Mom and Dad chased us off to bed again. As I snuggled under my warm covers, I smiled as I thought of how much fun we would have with our new little family.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this little story about a new litter of kittens. The pictures are not of Spice and her babies, but they are pictures of another new batch of kittens that were born about a week ago. Our grandchildren stayed up very late to watch them come into the world and it reminded me of my own experience with new kittens. 🙂