Finding a Hobby

Every since I graduated, I have been trying to find a new hobby to take up my spare time. Well, I don't really have any spare time right now because it is busy season and I am studying for the CPA exam, but I want to figure out a hobby to occupy my time after this is all over.

It's hard to pick a new hobby, but I think I found what I want to do, and it sounds like such a Portland hobby.

I want to get into small batch canning and making my own sausages.

It all started when I helped Erin can a small batch of Italian seasoned tomatoes. We canned nine pint jars, and it took about two hours from start to finish. It was fun and relaxing...much better than taking a full day to can a million jars of tomatoes that we probably wouldn't use. I was so interested in the canning, that I started looking up other small batch recipes. It turns out that there is so much that I could do: Pickles, pickled onions and jalapenos, homemade ketchup and mustard and barbecue sauce. Then when we get a garden, we will be able to can carrots and zucchini and all other types of veggies. It will be great.

If I do this, not only will I have a new hobby, but it will be something that will be useful to my family. We can can what we will eat and hopefully, in the long run, it will be cheaper than buying the products from the store. There are so many ideas for how to do this, and I am really excited to get started on it.

The idea about sausage came to me when I realized that importing Argentine chorizo is expensive, but making it would be cheap and fun. I found a few recipes online and it says that it shouldn't be too hard to make.

I guess that if these things actually turn into hobbies I will be writing about them a lot more in the future. Or I won't be writing at all because small batch canning takes up too much of my time.