Making Applesauce Into My Comfort Zone

Recently I wrote about going out one night to make applesauce with my M.O.P.S group. (Mothers of Preschoolers)

It was not something I would normally jump at the chance to do.

Go ahead and call me whatever you want (how about snooty suburbanite?) but basically I grew up in the burbs and we bought our applesauce from a jar, at the grocery store. My Mother never canned or froze food so this was something foreign to me. Really! And I was completely uncomfortable with the thought of having to go hang out and can ....of all things! I mean, why can stuff when we can use our precious child-free time and meet out at a fun restaurant or see a movie?

I decided I needed to have a conversation with my Mother when I learned my MOPS group was going to be canning as our fun, girls night out. Here is how it went:

Me: Why didn't we ever can at home?

Mother: I don't know, I guess it's just something we didn't do.

Me: Well, it is your fault I don't know how to can.

Mother: Of course it is, everything is always my fault.

Me: Why didn't you can? Seriously.

Mother: Well, BOTH of my Grandmother's canned. One was Scotch Irish and canned all kinds of things like Peaches, applesauce, etc while the other was Italian and always had tomato sauce and things like peppers on her basement shelves.

Me: Well, I LOVE tomato sauce and peppers!

Mother: And it was actually MY MOTHER who hated canning! So, we didn't do it in my house. I worked full time so this is probably why we didn't do it in our house either.

Me: Oh.

Mother: So, now you can go learn how to do it for the both of us.

While my conversation with Mother did not make me feel any more excited about spending my evening canning, I decided to go with an open mind and get into the experience.

It ended up being a lot of fun. We all sat around the kitchen table and told our fun stories of how we met our husbands, the stories behind our children, the pregnancies, and really bonded over applesauce.

And I learned that what I'm not comfortable doing is the first thing I should try.