There hasn't been much activity on the canning front, as it turns out we are moving. Where to, you ask? Charlottesville, Virginia. It's a lovely town, with many excellent opportunities for intellectual and social exertion. However, you know a move like this is just a hassle. You know all my canning (you probably do, if you're reading this now)? Well, to me it's security, love, home, family, joy and abundance. To a move, it's a bad back waiting to happen, just another box or a comment like, "You'll dump all the food right?". We've had several guys in for quotes on the move, and none of them was particularly enthusiastic about wrapping up my mason jars. "I've been in the business for 10 years," said one, "and I've never seen this. Didn't think people canned anymore." Sigh. So much for a renaissance in homemaking.

On the plus side, I was thrilled beyond measure to put on the Christmas dinner table a relish plate of (mostly) homemade things. Pickled veggies (brussels sprouts, carrots and green beans), accompanied by some Trader Joe's Fire Roasted Red Peppers and some regular supermarket olives and I was just tickled. (As an aside, my grandmother used to cure her own olives. Then, she lived near San Francisco and had an olive tree. Don't see many of them here in eastern Pennsylvania. Still, I'd like to try someday.) We also had a roast beef, creamed spinach, pierogies (instead of mashed potatoes, which I find to be more trouble than they're worth - and these pierogies had mashed spuds in them, roasted root veggies and salad. For dessert, Christmas cookies and a store-bought chocolate mousse cake, which was just so-so. Nothing was as good as the relish plate, though. Next year, I'm aiming for all home canned. Oh, and I've got to tell you this: my sister and her husband gave us a big basket full of their home canned items: salsa, picked cauliflower, and something else I can't remember at the moment, as well as some beer bread. What a great gift! I'm still glowing just thinking about it. I mean, this was something that took them time - how cool is that? (I would be remiss if I didn't mention that my other sister gave me hand blown margarita glasses, which I love. I've never had proper margarita glasses and now not only do I have them, but they're hand blown and completely beautiful. Do I have clever, generous sisters or what?)

My New Year's resolution is to be more attentive to this blog. And also to figure out some of the Blogger features that have been rather, um, opaque to me so far. Watch this space for indications of my success.