U.S.A. part 2 of (let's face it) way too many!

L.J. continued . . . . .

Canning, boat rides and hairdos, OH MY!

My dad's mom, my grandma (a.k.a. Honey), made the best strawberry fig preserves!  My PawPaw would hide them and hoard them, but every once and while when he was in really good spirits and was especially eager for us to leave his house, a batch of strawberry fig preserves would slip out of his stash and make their way into our outbound car.  Honey has passed away, but the memory of her sweet, red jars of heavenly-ness live on . . .

So . . . . with figs falling from the trees in my parents back yard, my dad decided that all of us should get together and try out Honey's recipe, which by the way, was slightly vague and scaled for a small batch of preserves.  But my dad had gathered 15 pounds of figs - or something like that!  So, the engineer (head chef), the inspector, and the chemical salesman set out to try and do some figuring.

First there was the issue of food processing 15 lbs. of figs, and then there was the issue of trying to convert the 15 lbs. into the original recipe because the Taylor family believes "Go big or go home!" So we had set out to make an industrial size batch of the heavenly preserves from the pint size recipe.  Strawberry fig preserves for EVERYBODY!


My mother (a.k.a. THE SARG(ent) vowed to remain silent during this process, which was hysterical in and off itself.

So with the whole family gathered around my sister's kitchen island, the experiment began.

Sister by choice, Belinda, looking on with niece Samantha

All the while my mom sitting silently self-gagged with hand held firmly over mouth as remaining silent turned out to require physical restraint!

There were conversions and interpretations and differing opinions.  And along the way, some "adjustments" were made.  In the end, we had a fun story, great memories, and some runny, but tasty strawberry fig preserves :) which made great ice cream topping!

And as if we hadn't had enough fun already, there were boat rides on the lake behind my sister's house . . . . with Little Pickle DRIVING the boat!  As it turns out, her Uncle David says she's a pretty skilled driver.

Now, I think the hairdos are gonna have to wait for the next part of this multi-part way too long blog about our time in the U.S.A.  Stay tuned for curly sue with straightened hair (straightened by a 9 year old!) and other fun stuff . . .