Yes. We. CAN! (Lauren)

Howdy, everybody (or possibly those three people who occasionally check this blog to see if we've posted anything new).

It's been a long while since I've written to you guys and I'm sorry. I was gone all summer for an internship in Pennsylvania! It was fun and I learned so much! But I also didn't have Internet where I was staying. If there is interest in what I was doing over the summer, just make a comment or two and I'll maybe make a post about it! (**Spoiler alert: it has to do with bio-fuel crops and science**)

But that is not what I came here to write to you about...

Recently (A.K.A. the past week and a half) Austin and I have been trying out hand at canning! We bought ourselves a genuine canner (a Presto 16 qt. pressure canner and cooker for those of you who may or may not be curious). What inspired this purchase was the abundance of tomatoes Austin and I received from Austin's Grandma Blatt. We had so many tomatoes that we knew we would never get through all of them and/or their sauce before it went bad so we decided to learn how to preserve... and quick!

So far, we have canned vegetarian chili (a very tasty recipe that I loosely followed from "The Picky Eater" blog **Spoiler alert: it includes cocoa powder!**), beet + tomato sauce made with some rabbit stock, and more beet+tomato sauce with some rabbit stock (Austin made the first batch, I made the second). Why beet and tomato you ask? Because Austin and I receive a food box from the Iowa Food Hub (they deliver to campus, it's a little bit like a C.S.A., any questions? Just comment and we'll make a post about our experience). The food box we get always has fresh semi-local vegetables and one week, we got 7 or 8 beets... I mean, what do you do with beets?

Being the genius I am, I decided "lets hide the beets in tomato sauce"! And we did. It was and is delicious. The sauce turned a deep reddish purple and it tastes like tomato sauce. We also made dark chocolate beet brownies (loosely following a recipe from the blog "The Way to My Family's Heart") that turned out pretty good!

Long story short, Austin and I are making baby steps towards preserving food and so far it hasn't killed us. I'm excited and every time a can successfully seals, I get a little giddy. Soon we are thinking about canning salsa and/or pickles.

I know this isn't a very long post, but I just wanted to remind you guys that I'm alive and that Austin and I are working our way to our dream.

Keep on keepin' on,
Lauren