It seems somehow strange to note in a blog called Hot Water Bath that I've put my canning kettle away for a bit. Because I prefer to can in season, there's not much that can be done right now where I live. Sure, I could make more chocolate sauce, but how much does one house really need? Now that gardeniera and cranberry chutney are done, I'd rather focus my attention to other, holiday-related culinary pursuits. I am planning, though, one last pre-baby canning spree of marmalade. I think that it will be a good thing to have around as we approach Easter (what? Easter already? are you out of your ever-lovin' mind? - marsha's subconscious) for cookies and cakes and such. Since I'm unlikely to really want to do it after the baby's here, I figure the post-Christmas lull is an excellent time. Other than that, I think we may be canning-free until late spring.


Speaking of lulls, we've hit one in the great Christmas cookie plan. Although I did make snickerdoodle dough yesterday I didn't actually get to bake it. In addition to the two-day hiatus caused by the need to get staples placed into my son's head, I've had a spectacular failure in the process of making tea cakes that I'm still in the process of cleaning up. I attribute this to one, some or all of the following:

1. my oven temperature is both uneven and unstable and requires constant fiddling to keep it at a sort-of correct temperature for any given recipe (for cooking, this isn't a problem but for baking it's another matter entirely)
2. I didn't follow the recipe correctly
3. the recipe is crap (Actually, this is one of Rose's recipes from the Rose's Christmas Cookies discussed a few days ago. In the series of Amazon reviews for the book two separate reviewers noted problems with this recipe so, to be fair, I may have somehow influenced it to fail because I expected it to fail, know what I mean?)
4. tea cakes are a pain under the best of circumstances and I've been sort of distracted lately anyway
5. my butter was too soft

I should finish the clean up today and will commence with the snickerdoodles. Plus, it's taken me so long to get moving with this business that the chocolate chip cookies are almost gone, so I'll make more of those as well. Then I should be back on track. Of course, this depends on today's wakefullness quotient. It's now nearly 4:30 a.m. and I've been away since 1:30. At some point I'm going to have to go back to bed and try to catch some Zs so I can be somewhat approaching functional today. It helps that I've used this time to get some of the day's actual pay-the-bills work done so I won't be quite so behind once the business day starts.


Finally, if you think of it, please send exam-success-and-confidence vibes to my husband. He has a major, change-the-course-of-your-life exam today and we're both just out of our minds about it. He knows the material, he just needs to know he knows it.