is it worth it?

we're embarking on an adventure in our household to make our own baked beans from scratch. i don't mean buy cans of pork and beans and add good things like sugar and bacon. i mean, buy dried navy beans, soak them overnight, concoct a certain bbq-y type sauce for the beans, and bake them for hours and hours, etc, etc. the first recipe i tried was way too tomato-ey and onion-ey so today i wanted to try a new recipe that i found online (excluding the onions that it also called for). except that it called for 1/4 cup of maple syrup. and we probably don't even have that much left. and if we do, dave has claimed it to use on his morning breakfasts of scrapple, fried in oil (ahem). so i googled how to make your own maple syrup. and i found a nice little recipe. so i successfully made my own "maple" syrup. about 1 cup of it. and it was the stickiest mess that i've ever dealt with in my kitchen to date. yuck. but it's done and the beans are in the oven for the next 6 hours. :) and i made some strawberry jam. the strawberries were on sale at marsh this week! and we gave away our last jar of jam last week to our friends. anyways, it is just amazing how much time all this has taken. making the syrup probably took the better part of an hour...i've been in the kitchen for the last 3 hours or so messing with all this.


but seriously. baked beans. maple syrup. and strawberry jam. you can pick these 3 items up in the grocery in like 30 seconds. and i just spent 3 hours slaving away to get them. is it really worth it??? dave would say yes. because we know what is in them. no HFCS, etc. and it may or may not be cheaper than store bought stuff.
....i guess it does give me some satisfaction to know i can make all this stuff. but seriously. hhhhhhhh......i still need to make one more batch of jam but i don't think i have enough time before my 3 piano lessons this afternoon. so instead of scrambling to get it done, i'm giving myself a break and i will make the rest later tonight.