Last Weekend--Out of Town Guest and Trip to the Cannery

Last weekend was super busy for us.  Paul's CMU grad-school friend, Tobias, stayed with us for the weekend. He is currently working on a PhD in Germany, but he came to New York for a conference and then stayed at our place for a few nights.  He, Paul, and two other CMU friends, Varnali and Kyung-min, Andrew, and I met up at Google in Manhattan Friday evening to check the place out and go out to dinner.  Here we are in front of a mural inside the Google building.

Saturday afternoon I was able to steal away without Andrew to go to the church's cannery with a couple of friends from church, Elyse and Maile.  It was about a 45-minute drive.  We carpooled there, and had a great time talking about food storage, cooking dry beans, making yogurt, baking bread, couponing--basically a lot of the things I love to talk about that Paul was probably happy not to have to talk about.  

I was so, so excited to go to a cannery for the first time!  I didn't get a ton of stuff this time; I'll definitely go back in a few months or so as time and budget allow.  I got all #10 cans of food, which stay good for 30 years, though I'll use them up in way less than one.  I got 5 cans of hard white wheat (it's whole wheat berries, just lighter in color and taste than your typical red wheat), 2 cans each of black beans and pinto beans, and 3 cans of quick oats.  I ran out of flour this week, so I took some of my newly-purchased wheat over to Elyse's on Thursday morning and she ground a whole can for me with her grain mill.  (I need to get me one of those!)  I've also already cracked open a can of pinto beans to make home-made refried beans (my new obsession) and a can of the oats.  Yeah, I'll definitely be going back to the cannery in a few months.  

I insisted on getting photos of us in action.  The machine we're operating is the can sealer.  It attaches the bottom of the #10 can.  This machine is the only part of the process that you can't do at home.  Dry canning was really extremely simple.  You just pour the food into the can, put in an oxygen-absorption packet, put the lid on, and pull the lever on the can sealer machine.  

Maile, with her daughter helping

Elyse

Me

Paul actually ended up having Andrew with him the whole day--what a guy.  He and the other CMUers went into the city in the afternoon/evening to go to a CMU meet-up and then out to dinner, and Paul took Andrew with him.  It was a good thing, too, because I had a photo book deal I bought on Gaggle of Chicks (like Groupon for things women are interested in) that I bought a few months ago that expired on Sunday.  I decided to do a photo book of 2010.  Putting together a photo book of an entire year is a lot of work!  I worked away at it Saturday afternoon/evening, until I remembered that I had agreed to substitute teach a class at church the next day--Yikes!  So I worked feverishly on my lesson plan, and then went back to the photo book.  I was able to finish the book Sunday and ordered it in time.  Then I was surprised to receive it on Friday! Anyone who visits us can see it.  I definitely think that online-ordered photo books are the way for me to go.  I just can't/don't scrapbook.  The best thing is that if you just wait until you hear of an amazing deal on a photo book, you can get them for really great prices.  The first one I did I paid for shipping only.  This last one I got for shipping cost plus $1/page for the additional 12 pages I added, which were totally worth it.