Mason jars, fig preserves and grenades! Who knew?

I love to work crossword puzzles.  I usually try to work at least one a day and sometimes more if I take the time to do them.  I was working on one today and the clue was -kind of jar.  5 letters, and of course it was mason.  It got me to wondering why they are called mason jars and since I like to learn things, I put the puzzle down and came and looked it up on the internet.  I know that the odds are that nobody will ever ask me how the name of a mason jar came about, but just in case they do I will be ready to let them know!  The mason jar was invented and patented by Mr. John Mason in 1858.  It is made of soda-lime glass.  The most common use of a mason jar is for home canning of course.  Here is something I had never heard about them though.  They have been used in warfare and they were called the Mason jar grenade.  The safety pin of a hand grenade would be pulled and the grenade would be put in a mason jar which would hold back the safety lever. The safety lever would release when the jar shattered and that would detonate the grenade. This was supposedly popular with the chopper crews in Vietnam and they would use them as cluster bombs during raids. They were easy to dump out of the flight door over a target and the thickness of the mason glass was resistant to premature shattering in the air.  Wow!  We sure have come a long ways since they did this! Now I have really learned something in researching a simple thing as to how a jar became known as a mason jar!  Needless to say I will never use a mason jar in such a manner, but I used to use them a lot to put up strawberry fig preserves, and for different jellies that I would make when I was playing Suzy Homemaker in my younger days.  I would love to have a fig tree again to make these preserves.  I bought one a few years ago and got it planted and I never saw it again!  A well meaning neighbor cut the grass and cut it down with the lawnmower before it ever had a chance.  I never bothered to get another one.  I will share my recipe with anyone who would like to try and make them.  They are so much better than regular fig preserves.   I'm glad I learned something new today and I hope you did too!

STRAWBERRY FIG PRESERVES

3 cups mashed ripe figs
3 cups sugar
2 (3oz.) packages strawberry flavored gelatin or 1 (6oz.) package

Mix all ingredients well.  Bring to a boil.  Cook 4 minutes at a rolling boil, stirring frequently.  Skim and pour into sterilized jars and seal.  Do not double this recipe.  

You can sterilize your jars in a dishwasher on a hot cycle.  This should be done shortly before you fill them, but they should be fully dry before you add the preserves, but not cooled down much. 

Fat and Fifty Four years old!

Yesterday morning I woke up and it was one of those OMG, how can a person hurt so bad when they wake up kind of mornings.  Ever have one of those?  I have too many of them.  I lay there and thought about it and said to myself- "Peggy, you hurt because you are Fat and Fifty Four.... Now get up off that thang and do something about it'!  So twelve hours later I am standing in my living room with a Wii Fit Plus game and a Wii Balance board.  I'm telling myself that this will be better than a treadmill and it sure will take up a lot less space.  So let the games begin.... First you start with a setup of your avatar or whatever they call it and you go thru a process of telling it how tall you are, and then it asks you to stand on the board and it weighs you.  I think it had four categories you would fall into, but the only two I saw were overweight and obese.  I broke out in a sweat without even doing anything when I thought it wasn't going to stop at overweight.  But it did. Whew! Some consolation huh?  Anyway, when everything was processed I started playing around with some of the workouts.  It was fun to do but I didn't want to overdo things my first time out.  Today I got a little more serious with it and actually did a 10 minute run and I didn't pass out! I only went a mile in 10 minutes, but you gotta start somewhere right?  I did a bike ride, I went flying, I went boxing, I went thru obstacles courses, and on and on.  It finally told me not to do too much in one day.  I have a feeling that I may have already overdone it because I am a Fat and Fifty Four year old overweight woman!  But it was fun and my energy level has been up today, and tomorrow I will probably wake up crying from pain in a different way than I usually do.  Even if I do I am going to stay the course.  I have set a goal with the game to lose 10 pounds in one month.  Wish me luck my friends.  I'm sure I will need it! 

I Have No Clue!

I really don't have a clue about setting up a blog, but I am going out on a limb and doing something I have thought about for a long time.  I used to think when I was a young girl that I would grow up to be a writer and I would write a novel greater than any that had been written!  How funny is that? Just the dreams of a young girl. When I was young though I would write some great short stories for class and I would love to read them out loud to the class and I would get the biggest thrill when the class would clap for my stories.  As I grew older I did not like to get in front of the class and speak and I would get physically sick if I had to.  I managed to get through the years of terror of doing that in school and somewhere along the way I lost my dream of being a writer.  It had nothing to do with the terror of public speaking, but just growing up and life going in different directions.  Anyway, I have decided to try putting my thoughts and ideas and musings into writing a blog.  It will be a blog for me and hopefully something that others might enjoy reading from time to time.  With that being said, I will not be striving for perfect punctuation, spelling, etc., so all you English teachers and Spelling police just try to enjoy the reading and don't worry about grading me! How many have already said-Oh, she spelled that wrong or she should have put a comma there, or whatever?   LOL!!!