always look for the silver lining

Those of you who are facebook friends know that when I came home this evening I found,  to my dismay, the freezer door cracked.  AGH!  Real quick I went thru the freezers contents pulling out what was thawed.  Fortunately no meat had thawed.  What had thawed were 4 loaves of bread, 6 quart size bags of squash, 5 quart size bags of blueberries, 3 quart bags of black berries, 4 quarts of beets, a container of mashed bananas for bread, 1 pkg of grated zucchini, 1 quart broccoli,1 quart green beans, and 1quart of strawberries.  Once all was removed I quickly shut the freezer and have left it alone all night giving it ample time to get back to where it needs to be. 

So I'm moving up my preparations for the food I put up.  I can live with it.  Pulling out my trusty and falling apart Ball canning book (seriously the free advertising I give on this blog for items should warrant a coupon or something!)and begin perusing recipes for the items now needing attention.  All the containers of squash were dumped into a deep pot.  I added a large chopped onion and some salt and cooked it up.  Once cool I loaded it back into freezer bags to freeze for later use in casseroles.  Half of the blueberries were added with sugar, cornstarch and lemon to make blueberry pie filling.  Umm yea, its good.  I can attest.  I licked the spoon when it was done.  Hey Quality Control!  The other half of blueberries were cooked, strained, added with sugar and lemon and blueberry syrup was made.  The strawberries were simmered with lemon juice and sugar to make strawberry butter.  Yea I hear some biscuits calling my name.  The blackberries have been cooked and I will make jam with them or juice for fruit tea.  I haven't decided yet.  If you want the fruit tea recipe check it out here.  The beets are going to a friend.  Hope she likes them a lot cause she is gonna be sick of em.  Lol.  The bread is in the fridge and we will be having lots of toast (and jam), French toast, sandwiches, etc.  The broccoli is a side tomorrow night and the green beans the next night. Bananas and zucchini are for bread.  I will make that tomorrow.  Too tired tonight.

So why the title to my post?  Well. Todays adventure showed me a couple of things.  First of all it doesn't matter that my food mill is missing that little screw on thingy at the bottom.  While messier than it probably would have been with the part, I was able to use the mill for the strawberries without it.  In other words in times when you may not have everything you need, you make do with what you have.  Secondly, it opened up freezer space making room for other gardeny things, and third, it was a challenge.  Loves a little challenge. 


Next day....

So got everything taken care of.  Still need to bake some banana bread, but all in all everything was used.  In addition I was able to put up an additional 8 pints of salsa.  Yay!  Caught up!  Then this evening I went out to the garden and TADAA!  More Tomatoes, Peppers, Squash, and Blackberries.  Thank you Lord!  So all's well that ends well!