My thornless black raspberries are ripe! None of us are great fans of blackberries so they often go to waste. This year I decided to make jam with them. I found a recipe for Bumbleberry Jam in Guidepost Mag in which you use mixed berries and rhubarb to make an easy, yummy jam with whatever berries are available. Sounded good to me. If it turns out well I can use the same recipe for all jams I want to make as the berry season changes.

I went to the Farmer's market to buy the rhubarb and also bought some good looking blueberries. Blueberries are also not a favorite in our family but they are supposed to be very good for you so I thought I'd throw in a pint when making my Bumbleberry Jam.

I bought a couple dozen jelly jars at the grocery store and some pectin. I thawed a bag of strawberries I had frozen in June and went online to check out the University of Georgia's Extension advice on processing jam. I found my huge canning pot in the basement but could not find my canning tongs or jar funnel. My husband had made Salsa several years ago when we had a big tomato glut. He did a great job but who knows where he decided the equipment should belong after he was finished. He is family-famous for not liking where something is kept, or deciding it is not used often enough to keep handy or even to keep at all so I did not spend a lot of time searching for these items. I'd just make do.

Now I was ready! I'd been preparing for a couple of days and was now worried that my berries would be going bad and I must get on with it! I gathered all the items I'd need and set to it! It was all pretty uneventful except the horrible mess made because I did not have the canning funnel. While I was stirring the berries and waiting for them to come to a rolling boil I thought of my first time canning. In my mind it has become the "Adventure in Canning".

I was young at the time. Having been raised a pure suburbonite, I didn't know much about canning or gardening or even cooking for that matter. My new husband, Angus, was city-born and raised and yet we both were country kids at heart and had decided that was the life we wanted to live. So we had settled on 10 acres outside of a rural community that was outside of a town that was outside of the city. In other words, we live in the country but the city is within an hour's drive. It seemed perfect and we were determined to learn the ways of the country life we had dreamed of. Oh, there are so many good stories of the many terrible/funny mistakes we made and the people who took us under their wing and bailed us out!

But I am telling about my first time canning. I had bought an ancient pressure canner at a Garage Sale but, of course, there was no longer the instruction manual that goes with it. I went to the library and found a book that would help and researched my wedding-gift cook books. All of them gave instructions but also gave the advice to refer to the directions with the canner. Hmmm.

My three year old son had helped snap the beans. They were cleaned and ready and so was I. It was nearly midnight by the time I was actually putting the jars into the pressure canner for the last part of the process. I hadn't gotten started until the kids were snugly and soundly asleep. Angus had also gone to bed since he had to arise early to get to his job in the city. I was on my own.

The jars were in but I was having a lot of trouble with the sealing gasket on the canner and the huge, heavy lid that was supposed to be screwed on. I had practiced doing it before there was boiling hot water in it and didn't have too much trouble but now I was having a lot of difficulty. I remembered when I was a child my mom cooking something in her pressure cooker and I also remember the stain on the ceiling of our kitchen that we had forever-after when something tomatoey exploded out. So I knew the danger that could be involved in this kind of liquid-under-pressure experiment.

I finally got the lid screwed on satisfactorily and now I just needed to watch the guage and time it and finish up. I was hot and weary by then but once started you can't just say "Oh, I think I'll finish in the morning." I was wearing a hugh loose sundress (without a bra) which was the most comfortable, cool thing I could find for the long, hot duty... but I was still sweaty.

I was standing close the the stove, watching the guage slowly, much too slowly, move its little red arm higher and higher. The pot was jiggling and hissing which I took to mean we were almost finished and my aching body, and especially my tired, thong-wearing feet, would soon rest.

Suddenly, and without warning, boiling, bubbling hot water spewed out of the pot from under the lid! It shot out 2 feet in every direction like the rays of the sun shooting steaming lava. There was no time to think but my body reacted. My aching feet shot backward, my middle pulling away from the spurting water. It subsided as quickly as it had come once the pressure was released. It took me a minute to realized what had just happened. I was still standing, in the middle of the kitchen now, leaning over at the waist with the front of my dress, totally saturated with hot water, dripping onto the flooded floor.

When I had jerked my body away from the water my loose cotton dress had stayed where it was, hanging like a curtain in front of me. It had stopped the hot water, absorbed some and sent the rest downward to the floor where my feet had already long gotten out of the way. I was stunned for a moment. I was completely unharmed, unburned! It did not seem possible! There had been a few hot splatters on me but nothing else at all. The entire kitchen - stove, counters, floor- was drenched...yet I was not. I sent up a "Thank you, God" and this was the first time I ever thought of the possibility that maybe there was such a thing as a Guardian Angel and maybe I have one.