Simple Happiness

One of the advantages of living a simple lifestyle is that it takes very little to make me happy.  My happiness doesn't come from the amount of money I have or the stuff I own.  It comes from the little things.

Like today.  While at the grocery store I checked the price of hamburger.  The kind I usually buy was $2.59 a pound.  I put a 5 lb. package in my cart.  About 20 minutes later I was back at the meat counter looking for something I had forgotten, and found that the hamburger had been reduced to $1.29 a pound.  Today was the "Sell By" date.  So this time I put 30 lbs into my cart.

After I got home, I browned it all and packed part of it into pint jars.  The third canner load is processing as I write.  Will finish canning the rest tomorrow morning.  I should wind up with at least 35 pints of hamburger.  That amounts to close to 70 meals for me, as I can generally get two meals out of one pint jar.

Yep.....it's the little things.

By the way.....if anyone is interested in canning hamburger, I have tried a couple of different methods.  The first hamburger I canned, I browned the meat, packed it into jars, added broth and canned it according to the directions for ground beef.  When I tried a jar of that hamburger, I wasn't at all happy with it.  It turned out with sort of the taste and consistency of dog food.  Which is what I will use that batch for.

Then I read a post by Jackie Clay on the Backwoods Home blog.  She is a canning goddess and many of the methods and recipes I use successfully come from her blog.  (The link is in the sidebar.)  She said that the method she uses for hamburger is the same process I used, except she doesn't add any liquid to the jars.  I tried it and it worked like a charm.  The hamburger turns out just like it was cooked fresh.

Another of those simple things that make me happy.