My Wonderful Grandma

Since I'm still thinking about the recycle thing it comes to mind about grandma's cleaning tips. One day while watching "Maam" ( that's what we called Grandma Reeves) peel tomatoes for canning I noticed that the Mason Jar Lids needed a good cleaning. Although I was still really quite a little girl washing the jars had become my job at home because that was before they started manufacturing the Wide Mouth Jars. Mother said since my hands were little enough to fit inside the jars easily and her hands were much too big that would be a good job for me. Never mind if I did not get them clean the first time Mother would just say "lick your calf over" and I would have to wash it again or until it looked clean . Also I had tried cleaning a few of those Mason Jar lids. The kinds they made back then were not easily cleaned and when I looked at those dirty jar lids it sort of made me ache because I knew how much work it took to clean them. However Maam just put all the lids in a pan and dumped the tomato peels with the water they were in over them and let them set a while I'm thinking it was over night. When she removed them from the tomato juicy water and rinsed them
they looked as good as new. Suffice it to say I was very impressed and "Maam" became even more my hero that she already was. I'm thinking the reason the acid from the tomatoes was activated is that the tomatoes were always dunked in hot water before being rinsed in cold water and it was the hot water that got dumped on the dirty lids.