Whew!

Family History calls and so I am popping back in for some quick re-caps.

Kid date night.  Brian has been putting in tons of hours at work trying to get the business plan put together.  (When I say tons I mean almost 17 hours a day.  The other hours of the day are devoted to sleeping, getting ready for the day, getting ready for bed and commuting.)  So a couple of weeks ago the kids and I had our own date night.  After Macy's dance we went out to dinner over in Daybreak.  Of course dinner had to include dessert so we had some over-priced gelato.  We then played around the lakes until the rain chased us home.  It was one of the best date nights in a long time.

I believe the following week was when Braden caught the stomach flu.  The little guy was miserable and got so dehydrated we had to take him to a Kidscare for an IV.  They stuck him 3 times before declaring they couldn't get a vein and sent me to the ER (which happened to be in the same building).  I then paid another co-pay, had to go through the illness history again with another doctor to again be told it was stomach flu.  They stuck him with the needle 2 times before they got a vein.  Of course we were in the ER so a 15 minute procedure turned out to be an all night event.  I was not happy.  If they hadn't have left the IV in I would have walked out (I had already paid and there wasn't more to do for him and I already knew the recommendations to help him).  After his flu recovery the girls shared a cold with him and that zapped him for another week.  Luckily it is over and he is back to normal and they way he has been eating I am sure he will surpass the lost poundage soon.  Here he is miserable in the ER.

After dance one week Macy gets in the car and tells me she is quitting ballet.  I asked her why.  She replied that she "had too much to do."  I asked, "like what?"  "I have dance, soccer and school."  "That's it?" I said.  After a pause she responded, "and a dance recital."  Man what a hectic life.  Too bad I told her she can't quit and dance is almost over with for the summer.

Speaking of soccer, here is a picture of her game today.  Today she showed a little more aggression.  I think she really likes dance and soccer.  She really likes to play with friends too and that is a big dilemma.

The blond girl on her team is real good and aggressive.  Today Macy kept trying to take the ball from her own team mate.  Last week I realized that to be a soccer mom in Utah I am going to have to start wearing thermals.  Today that was re-confirmed.

During dance Kelsey, Braden and I sit in the car because it is too far to head back home.  I let Kelsey play around in the car.  The same day Macy and I had the previously mentioned conversation, I looked back to find chocolate on Braden's mouth.  I asked Kelsey where it can from.  It was an M&M she found on the ground.  Then I noticed a jolly rancher in her mouth.  It too come from the floor of the carpet.  Luckily I found the wrapper so it wasn't a previously sucked on candy.

This week I did some updating to our family's 72 hour kit.  I finally purchased a large enough backpack to carry it all.  I threw out one set of diapers (size 5) and kept the other set for Braden (they were for Kelsey).  That tells you how long it has been.  I think we are all set.  I still have to replace some water and first aid stuff, but other than that we are set.  My only concern is that I might tip over if it is blowing too hard.  This thing is heavy and stuffed to the brim.  I can't wait until my kids are old enough to haul their own food.  I was able to pawn off some things to their own backpacks because Macy and Kelsey are old enough to carry some.  Here is the monster pack.  I took it for a trial run up the stairs carrying Braden.  I sure hope he learns to walk soon.  Even then I still need to hit the weights a little harder to get very far.  Good thing kids move slow.

An update on me.  Besides the kids real estate is keeping me fairly busy.  I am working on selling 2 homes and helping someone buy a home.  Plus I have an awfully picky client looking for a home.  The name starts with a "B" and ends with a "rian".

Hair cuts and food storage

I finally did it. I took Kelsey to get her hair cut. She had been asking for weeks. I was hoping to grow it a little longer so we could donate it to locks of love. I had let her hair get so long that in the fall I started to think how neat it would be to be able to do this. Her hair is so soft and pretty. What little girl wouldn't want her hair.

Of course I didn't get Kelsey in on this perfect plan. I never worried about it because she has always hated getting her hair cut. When she started asking is when I tried to convince her of my idea. She didn't buy it. So off to Cookie Cutters we went. She is really happy about the new do and I think she is as pretty as ever. Macy is always up for a hair cut. She still asks if she can get it cut to her ears. Notice from the picture above I didn't let that happen.

On Thursday I was at my Grandma Lue's house with my broker working on a listing price. I had my camera with me and couldn't help taking a picture of her food storage. When I was first married I always told her that we would come running to her house when disaster struck. This was why. Now some of it could have been scary to eat, but when you are starving you never know what you will do. When I saw this storage on Thursday I thought "Now where am I going to go?" I guess I better get back on the band wagon and start re-stocking. I have depleted my once filled food storage since living with Bri's parents. I didn't want to move it all again and I thought the stay would be short. Well here I am still here only now when I move into my own home we won't have anything (except for wheat, flour and sugar those are in the big buckets and they are stored where it is too difficult to break in to). By the way, the big old metal garbage cans is where she used to store some of her wheat. I didn't pick up a lid to see if there was still any wheat in there.

Don't Can Your Butter

Scratch my earlier post on canning butter. Luckily a friend of a friend (who I have met) saw my post gave me some warning about such processes. She did her studies and BYU some of her professors there warned about ways which are called canning but in reality are not canning because they don't use the boiling water method or pressure canning. I did some of my own research and this is what I found about why this is not safe. Hopefully I haven't caused too many problems and no one will die from the information I passed around. The following reference came from the National Center for Home Food Preservation.

Should I use directions for canning butter at home that I see on the Internet?

Indeed, there are some directions for 'canning' butter in circulation on the
Internet. Most of what we have seen are not really canning, as they do not have
Boiling Water or Pressure Canning processes applied to the filled jar. Jars are
preheated, the butter is melted down and poured into the jars, and the lids are
put on the jars. Some directions say to put the jars in the refrigerator as they
re-harden, but to keep shaking them at regular intervals to keep the separating
butter better mixed as it hardens. This is merely storing butter in canning
jars, not ‘canning’. True home canning is when the food is heated enough to
destroy or sufficiently acid enough to prevent growth of all spores of
Clostridium botulinum (that causes botulism) and other pathogens during room
temperature storage on the shelf.

Additionally, when you consider the economics of the process (energy costs involved with heating, cost of jars and lids, etc.), even if the butter is bought on sale, it may not be economically viable to prepare butter to store for years in this manner. Good quality butter is readily available at all times, if butter is needed for fresh use. If the
concern is about emergency food supplies, there are dry forms of butter that can
be purchased and stored, oils that can be used in an emergency, or commercially
canned butter in tins (although we have only seen this for sale from other
countries). Melted and re-hardened butter may not function the same as original
butter in many types of baking anyway.

There are a few issues with the common directions circulating on the Internet at this time (Spring 2006):

1. Physical safety and food quality: In the provided directions, the jars are preheated in an oven (dry-heat), which is not recommended for canning jars. Manufacturers of canning jars do not recommend baking or oven canning in the jars. It is very risky with regard to causing jar breakage. There is no guarantee that the jars heated in this dry manner are sufficiently heated to sterilize them, as we do not have data on sterilizing jar surfaces by this dry-heating method.
2. The butter is not really being 'canned'; it is simply being melted and put in canning jars, and covered with lids. Due to some heat
   present from the hot melted butters and preheated jars, some degree of vacuum is pulled on the lids to develop a seal. It rarely is as strong a vacuum as you obtain in jars sealed through heat processing. The practice in these 'canned' butter directions is referred to as 'open-kettle' canning in our terminology,
   which is really no canning at all, since the jar (with product in it) is not
   being heat processed before storage.
3. Although mostly fat, butter is a low-acid food. Meat, vegetables, butter, cream, etc. are low-acid products that will support the outgrowth of C. botulinum and toxin formation in a sealed jar at room temperature. Low-acid products have to be pressure-canned by tested processes to be kept in a sealed jar at room temperature. It is not clear what the botulism risk is from such a high-fat product, but to store a low-acid moist food in a sealed jar at room temperature requires processing to destroy spores. A normal salted butter has about 16-17% water, some salt, protein, vitamins and minerals. Some butter-like spreads have varying amounts of water in them. We have no kind of database in the home canning/food processing arena to know what the microbiological concerns would be in a butter stored at room temperature in a sealed jar. In the absence of that, given that it is low-acid and that fats can protect spores from heat if they are in the product during a canning process, we cannot recommend storing butter produced by these methods under vacuum sealed conditions at room temperature.
4. Some other directions do call for 'canning' the filled jars of butter in a dry oven. This also is not 'canning'. There is not sufficient, research-based documentation to support that 'canning' any food in a dry oven as described on this web page or any page that proposes oven canning is even sufficient heating to destroy bacteria of concern, let alone enough to produce a proper seal with today's home canning lids.

In conclusion, with no testing having been conducted to validate these methods, we would NOT recommend or endorse them as a safe home-canning process, let alone
for storing butter at room temperature for an extended period. We do know that the methods given for preheating empty jars, or even filled jars, in a dry oven are not recommended by the jar manufacturers or by us for any food. Aside from the physical safety and quality issues, and the fact that it is not canning at all, if there happened to be spores of certain bacteria in there, these procedures will not destroy those spores for safe room temperature storage.