Homeschool has a snow day

The weekly homeschool co-op we participate in was supposed to reconvene Friday after its month-long Christmas break. But the group uses the local county schools as a guide for weather cancellations so when another couple inches of snow fell early Friday morning, school and co-op were called off.

It presented an odd flip-flop on the usual snow day emotions -- homeschooled kids tended to feel regretful while parents were pumping fists and shouting "yeah!" DH and DS still managed to get together with some of the other homeschool families for the afternoon at the local roller skating rink. But we spent the morning playing board games in the living room.

For supper I was planning to make spaghetti and I can never seem to do that on a small scale. I like to use the tomatoes we've canned or dried to make the sauce and when I start putting the ingredients into a pot it always turns out to be a stockpot that's required. Because I had time due to the "snow day" I purposely prepared 2-1/2 gallons of spaghetti sauce and canned the excess in quart jars. Previously I've frozen the extra but the freezers are full and the ease of using my still-new-to-me All-American pressure canner makes it no real effort to process the quart jars at 75 minutes and store them on the shelf. Besides with the cold spell we're having (daily highs still under the freezing mark) the usual problem with the heat canning generates is a plus instead of a drawback. I think I'll look around and see what other convenience-type foods I might want to consider canning.