Tales from the doctors diary....

I'm an old friend of the Canning Doc. Sometimes when I visit, the CD (that's short for Canning Doc) feels the need to put me to work. So, off we went in the wee hours of the morning to personally greet a field of strawberries and jalapenos. Now, I can't say if the plants were happy about the plans the CD had for them. I sure that if I could, you would probably think that I was insane. None-the-less, we proceeded to coax these little red bundles of sweet berry goodness into our baskets. (Ok, I am aware that a strawberry is not a berry. Its an aggregate-accessory fruit. But "sweet accessory goodness" just does not have the same ring to it.) The jalapenos put up a bit of a fight, as expected, but in the end they, well, lets just say that they are in the jars. We don't need to get into the details.

After collecting the specimens, the CD took me to her canning facility. Its quite an impressive operation. Strawberries and jalapenos were flying all over the place. It seemed we were being assaulted by an army of red and green. To the untrained eye, you may have thought they were going to win. But, don't be fooled. You have to get up pretty early in the morning to put one over on the CD. She effortlessly dealt her justice on each and every last one of the invaders.

After the dust settled, we counted up the spoils: Six jars of strawberry jam, eight jars of strawberry-jalapeno jam, five quarts of strawberry lemonade, and one strawberry-rhubarb pie. Oh, I guess I forgot the tale of the rhubarb. That is a story for another time!