In Queue

I'm so glad Heavenly Father staggered the harvest time of fruits and vegetables.  Can you imagine if all the peaches, tomatoes, pears, etc. all came ripe the same week?  Arghhh!

I've got the last of the peaches and the first of the pears in the dehydrator, the turkey carcass from yesterday's dinner is cooking on the stove to make stock, a load of dishes is washing in the dishwasher and I took out a gross garbage.  I'm making progress.

I got contacts two weeks ago.  I think I'm finally getting used to them.

I LOVE fall time.

I'm listening to Michael Jackson on Pandora right now. 

Now it's Tears for Fears.

Can you tell what decade I grew up in?

Food Storage

So far,

10 pints or so of peach freezer jam

6 quarts of canned crushed tomatoes

8 1/2 pints of canned salsa

4 quarts of frozen spaghetti sauce

9 quarts of canned peaches

12 1/2 pints of canned peach jam

2 quarts of canned dilly beans

2 full dehydrators of peaches

and

6 quarts of spaghetti sauce that got tossed.

All of that was done in the last 2 1/2 weeks except the freezer jam.  No wonder the kitchen is a mess!

Awesome Quote

INTERRUPTIONS

"When you are exasperated by interruptions, try to remember that their very frequency may indicate the value of your life. Only people who are full of help and strength are burdened by other persons' needs. The interruptions which we chafe at are the credentials of our indispensability. The greatest condemnation that anybody could incur - and it is a danger to guard against - is to be so independent, so unhelpful, that nobody ever interrupts us, and we are left comfortably alone."

-Anonymous

from The Anglican Digest

Canning Lesson #3

Jam that gets cooked on the burner will take the finish off the glass top.  The stove doesn't have a sweet tooth, I guess.

Canning Lesson #2

When making peach jam, always use a bigger pot than you think you'll need.  If you don't do this, your jam will overflow out of the almost-big-enough pot and all over the burner, counter, cupboards and floor.  Burning jam stinks and fills the house with smoke.

Canning Lesson #1

Make sure you have enough fruit pectin for making canned peach jam.  Not doing this will make you stop what you are doing and run to the store so you can finish the jam.

I Think I Can, I Think I Can

I just did a produce swap with my in-laws.  It was awesome.  I gave them all the picked tomatoes (there are a lot more still in the garden), a few potatoes and 8 or so peppers.  In return I got 2 more small boxes of peaches to add to the 3 boxes they gave us last night.  Now instead of tomatoes coming out of our ears, we have peaches!  I'm going to can the nicer-looking ones and jam and dehydrate the not-so-cute ones.  I think I'll be busy for a few days with these.  More work, but at least they're not tomatoes!!

Not So Bad After All

http://healthyfamilycookin.blogspot.com/2011/09/when-canning-just-isnt-worth-it.html

You know, I don't feel bad about my spaghetti-sauce-in-the-freezer mishap anymore.



Random

 Right now I am eating my lunch:  leftover pasta bake, a hard-boiled egg, a whole tomato, an apple and a glass of milk.  Yummy.

I just came in from weeding.  I weeded for 2 hours and 40 minutes today and finished up what I couldn't yesterday.  I weeded for 3 hours yesterday.  That tells how bad the weeds were.

The salsa I made and canned on Friday is very tasty.

I like to eat alone.

Stacking firewood is fun.

The sound of airplanes droning is a sleepy sound.

Weeding is satisfying.  Especially those morning glories.

I had at least 4 weird dreams last night and remembered them enough to tell my husband about them this morning.

I like being here by myself.

We have a lot of tomatoes.

I found a dead mouse while weeding.  Gross.

I just finished reading Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens.  I recommend it.

My pasta is getting cold.  I'd better finish it.



Busted

You know those 6 quarts of pasta sauce I made last week?  Well, I don't know if I filled the jars too full or the jars weren't freezable, but every one of them cracked in the freezer.  Rather than try to save the sauce and take a chance of glass shards being in the sauce, we just tossed the whole lot.  Luckily for me, our garden is still producing tomatoes at a too-rapid rate, so I'll get another chance to make sauce this week.  This time I'll can it or use plastic freezer containers.  Lesson learned.

Alone Time

I realized I haven't posted how having all the kids in school is going.  As my husband likes to say, it's delicious, delightful and delovely.

In other words,

AWESOME!!!



Down to Two

Yesterday I was able to use more than 100 tomatoes to make spaghetti sauce, so we are down to 2 giant bowls of tomatoes instead of 4.  We're making progress.  After having pasta and sauce for dinner, we were left with 6 quarts of sauce to freeze.  It was a most-of-the-day process and made quite the mess, but was worth it to use so many tomatoes.  Next up, salsa.

Now, what to do with all those summer squash!