A Recipe That Works

Lately I've been on a quest for good, reliable canning recipes.  Thanks to all that rain, I've got lots of veggies to deal with.  It's a good problem to have, but a problem, none the less.  You'd think you could just look up what to do with banana peppers and there would be some sort of consensus on how to safely and easily can them.  But there's not.  There's 45 recipes for the same thing.  And they're all different.  Different ingredients.  Different processing times.  Different etc.   Now, if it was just cooked peppers that I was wanting, I would just pick any old recipe and wing it.  Then eat it.  And not really give it much thought.  But canning is a different story.  Improperly canned foods can kill people.


And the problem is that you wouldn't really know that you did it wrong until it was too late.

See why it's so hard to pick a recipe?

Raising children is a lot like that, too.  We're all wanting to find the perfect recipe that's guaranteed not to do any harm in the long run.  The perfect recipe for success.  So that the little people turn out good.  And everyone's happy.

The problem is that there's so many different recipes out there!  There's 45,000,000 opinions out there about how to make the best children.  And nobody seems to agree.  Some people rave about the no spanking method and other people rant about the lack of spanking.  Some mom's mark everything to pieces with a red pen while other moms don't even have one.

I guess one of the reasons that there's so many different recipes for canning peppers is that there's so many different variations in the pepper itself.  Even the same type of pepper varies greatly based on climate and moisture and other growing conditions.  Some are much hotter than others!  And that varies from year to year and plant to plant.  So it's impossible for there to be a definite method that guarantees you'll be happy with your outcome.

I think kids are a lot like that, too.

There's just so many variants.  Even in the same family, there's no surefire "recipe" for all those separate individuals.

 Some are just "spicier" than others.   : )

.....Just a thought from a gardening mama