a happy Mother's Day

Today was a very happy Mother's Day at our house, and I hope the same was true for those of you celebrating today. Although this post doesn't have much to do with Mother's Day itself, it's partly a brag on my husband and partly a brag on his awesome gift.

My husband is one of the world's best gifters. I have no idea how he pulls it off year after year, holiday after holiday. But he manages swoon-worthy gifts for almost every occasion.  Now, I realize that a bundle of glass jars wouldn't be swoon-worthy for every mom to receive on Mother's Day, but here is why he is so amazing at this.  I have canned with mason jars for years.  I have watched my mother and grandmother can with mason jars for many, many years. I never even knew Weck jars existed until I started following Food in Jars blog last year. But even though I thought they were lovely and would be such fun to add to my canning collection, once I saw the price tag, I tucked them away in my head as a maybe-someday-if-I-stumble-across-some-on-sale.  I never even mentioned them to Paul.

What's kind of funny about this gift is that Paul didn't go looking for the crème de la crème of canning jars on the Food in Jars site to surprise me. He just googled canning jars to see if anyone made jars with an interesting design. And now I am the proud owner of a few Wecks.  I can't even decide what to put in them! It seems like they should have a special batch of very pretty jam or pickles worthy of their beauty.

For good measure, Paul also bought The Sprouted Kitchen cookbook, which he apparently heard reviewed on NPR.  When I opened this gift, I joked with him that he might need to build us a new library just for my cookbooks. However, once I dug into this little beauty, I realized that this book is actually a nice addition to our collection, and in fact, I made the Honey Almond Butter today as I needed to make almond butter today anyway.

I hope all the mothers out there felt similarly cherished and loved on this special day for honoring mothers!