Someday I'll Stop Writing about Canning

Steve comes from a part of Canada where baked beans are a staple. Baked beans and brown bread are a traditional Saturday night supper (using the word supper is also traditional). We don't really eat baked beans in my family, but I agree that Steve's homemade version is a very nice meal, especially on a rotten, stormy night like today, but they take many hours to prepare, so we decided to can them to make them available on short notice.  Yesterday we put up 12 quarts.

Some of our summer canning efforts.  Baked beans on bottom shelf.

Here's how you do it:

1. Soak 5.5 pounds of haricot beans overnight in your giant jam-making pot. 
2. Forget to buy all the ingredients the day before, so spend the morning walking downtown to the grocery store. Stop at the library to pick up season 1 of The Gilmore Girls too. Consider buying chcolate-covered peanuts, but ultimately decide to resist the temptation. 
3. Come home and eat lunch to restore your energy, while you tell your unborn baby that he is getting big and fat and making you tired. 
4. Put the pot of beans on the stove to boil. 
5. Chop your onions and pork and combine your sauce ingredients (ketchup, mustard, brown sugar). 
6. When the beans come up to a boil, add the other ingredients. 
7. Realize that your pot is not big enough to hold everything and transfer part of the mixture to the remoska. Be sure to do this in the messiest way possible, using the most kitchen impelements possible.
8. Cover the jam-making pot with foil and heave it into the oven. 
9. Regret not buying the chocolate-covered peanuts. 
10. Start watching Gilmore Girls. 
11. Check the beans after each GG episode (about 50 minutes). 
12. Worry that nothing seems to be happening in the oven. Add water to the beans in the remoska as needed.
13. Repeat the checking, worrying, and chocolate peanut regretting for 10 hours.
14. Wash and prep canning jars.
15. Lie down and wonder if maybe your baby will be a tap dancer when he grows up, as he seems to be practicing for it in the womb.
16. When your husband gets home from work at 10:30 pm, let him fill the jars and process them for 75 minutes.

We're going to try a bottle of them tonight. And then I'm going to buy some chocolate-covered peanuts.