The weekend is here

The weekend is here and it looks like it will be crazy! We are hosting a wine tasting party for a few friends and we have some more canning to do, as well as baking and laundry and general cleaning and yard chores.

I have let all the chores get ahead of me yet again. Sigh. I know I am not the only one who doesn't have the time and energy to clean, but even though I mean well, I still have trouble getting to it. So, tonight and tomorrow I will clean the rest of the house, do a couple loads of laundry, grocery shop, and bake bread for the party and for next week (unless we eat it all, and then I will have to bake more on Sunday).

The wine tasting tomorrow night should be a lot of fun after all that work. We have about 8 people, 6 bottles of wine, and a really nice pasta dinner. Sounds like a good time, right? :)

On Sunday we have to get some work done outside (if it doesn't rain too much). A friend's neighbor sent me a whole mess of plants and bulbs and tubers that she divided this fall and we need to sort through them, figure out what they all are (hopefully) and get them in the ground. We also need to get a space cleared to store the dahlias, since they will be ready to dig up within a couple of weeks. A good chunk of the garden beds will also be ready to clean out soon, since they are about done producing, now that the weather is cooling off.

On a side not, I have to find something to do with 4 cabbages. They haven't been picked yet, since I am not sure what to do with them, but they will split before too long and I am worried. I can make a couple of dinners with one or two, but there are still two more to use up. I am thinking sauerkraut, but I have never made it before and need advice. If anyone knows a good method, it would be super if you could share.

The last chore I can think of is to put my herb garden to bed. We laid out a pretty design this summer, but it was getting late in the season, so the herbs I planted never really took off until a couple of weeks ago. Some are doing really well and I was thinking to move them into a large planter I have and over-winter them in my dining room. Then I could have fresh herbs for as long as they last. Next year, hopefully I can get it planted earlier and hopefully the neighbors cats won't find it so appealing and I will have a good enough crop to be able to freeze or dry a bunch to use the rest of the year.

Canning Tally

I start every post with an apology for not posting in so long...but I can't help it. I had a busy summer with work and running around and I don't know what all.

Today I just wanted to show you what I was up to this weekend.

The total was:

60 pints of salsa

24 quarts or spaghetti sauce

14 quarts of tomato soup

29 quarts of canned tomatoes

8 dozen no-bake cookies

10 dozen peanut butter cookies

4 dozen butter cookies.

We bought 10 boxes of tomatoes at the Farmer's Market and spend two long days processing and canning all the things we love to eat all year long. The soup is a new recipe from a friend of Shane's at work, so I haven't tried it yet, other than a spoonful to check the spices while it was still really hot. I think I will heat up so and make grilled cheese for dinner in a couple of days. We still have two boxes of tomatoes to do something with, so if the soup is really good, I might throw together another batch later this week. It was a huge pain and a very tiring weekend, but I am so glad that we will have all these yummy things to eat this year, it is just so much better than store-bought...and easier :)

A picture post

These are the first of the seeds we planted for our garden this year. 16, count 'em, 16 tomato plants, in 7 different varieties (yes, we are nuts, no, I am not quite sure there will be enough tomatoes for canning). The round ones are green bell peppers. :)

This is my shamrock plant, which I am showing off because it is happy enough to bloom. Yay!

Tiny green points in my bulb garden. These are snow iris.

Flash on weighing day. He is 5 months old now and I think he is getting bigger, but I need to start measuring him more carefully to be sure :)

I baked an apple pie with some of the apples that I froze last fall. Shane thought it looked pretty and told me to take a picture of it. It tasted pretty good, too.

We visited my parents at Christmas and drove over to the coast one day. The waves were coming in and the sun was shining through the clouds. I loved this picture.

Promises, promises...

Hey, sometimes I manage to follow through. That's right, I am here with pictures of apricots and kuchen, fair and ribbons, and maybe if I get some taken, some pictures from the green beans I am canning this evening.

This is a pretty picture of most of the apricots that I was given. We ended up drying I don't know how many (although they filled up a couple of gallon bags when I packed them all up) and froze two or three gallons. I also made some kuchen, which is a yummy German pastry. It is basically a bread with sugar crumble (like streusel topping), fruit, and a thin custard topping. I will try to dig out a recipe to post tomorrow. I love it because it makes a nice dessert or snack and freezes really well.

These are my fair entries. I won a first place ribbon on each of the first three: the pears from my tree, the strawberry jam I made with a friend (hers is the one next to mine, also a first), and my potted sweet potato. Shane made fun of me for planting the ends of a sweet potato, but I just wanted to try it. I think it makes a gorgeous house plant. I am hoping that it will actually make some small sweet potatoes, but who knows. The last is a second place ribbon on the zucchini relish. I must say in my defence that it was a second for purely superficial reasons, which were not my fault. Cathy's got a first, and since we made them together, you can tell that it would have been a first also. Next time I will be more careful, since they are very picky about the jars and labels and so on, and take them into account in the judging.

What is that big pink ribbon on the sweet potato, you ask? Why, that is my Best of Show ribbon for the Unusual Vegetable class. Yippee!! I am so proud of my silly potato. Such a good potato to win Best of Show.

So, I had a lot of fun entering in the fair and am already making plans for stuff to enter next year. The way their rules are stated, entries have to be made or grown during the year previous to the fair. So, anything I make between now and next August, I could enter. I am going to be doing a lot of canning this fall and hopefully some really great needlework projects. If I can ever finish any of them.

We canned green beans tonight, just one canner load since they take so long, and they look pretty good. Hopefully they all sealed properly, since I have about 5 more loads to do and it would be nice to know that I am doing it right. I am still a bit intimidated by pressure canning. Water bathing is so much simpler, but, unfortunately, just not an option for veggies like my green beans. After the green beans are done, we hope to buy a whole bunch of tomatoes and can salsa and spaghetti sauce and try to find time to make pickles. Also, on the 22nd, I am having some friends over for a canning party. We are going to make three or four types of jam and relish and then split up the batches, so we can each take some of every type home. I thought that was the best way to get a lot of kinds, because otherwise you end up with more jam than any sane person needs, especially a sane person trying to cut back on carbs (which means less toast). I have no pictures of my green beans for you right now, but I will take some in the morning and post them, at least I will if they all seal properly. If not, I may edit this post to erase any evidence that I made the attempt. :) Wish me luck.

Apricots and Fair Time

I was reminded again today that I have not gotten the pictures of my apricot adventures posted yet. I apologize for being busy and having dead camera batteries. I know they are just double A's, but I have to make it to the store to get more. Someday...at least by Saturday, if not tomorrow.

We ended up drying I don't know how many pounds of apricots, giving me a couple of gallon bags full to put in the freezer for snacking. Yummy yum. It's kind of cool because we had two different varieties, one large and sweet, the other smaller and more tart. We also got another couple of bags from a friend for me to freeze in halves for baking later.

Tonight I went down to a nearby town whose fair is this weekend. It is not my town, but it is one of those great small town fairs and we have friends who are very very very involved. We always volunteer to help and this year I entered some strawberry jam and zucchini relish that I helped make, as well as some pears from our tree and my potted sweet potato. I will find out if anything won on Saturday and hopefully I can post pictures (taken by my camera with the new batteries that I will buy) of my entries and their (hopeful) ribbons. So, lets all cross our fingers and hope to see lots of lovely pictures Saturday or Sunday morning.

Also, nifty event coming up...I am hosting a canning party for a few of my friends. We will make jams and relish and may do some baking. I am so excited!

So I have a facebook acount now...sigh. I was trying not to. Really hard. I really don't need one more site to keep track of and check obsessively. But then my brother and sister got facebook and closed their myspace accounts. Then my dad got facebook. So I have facebook. I am such a follower. :) It's not my fault though, I had to. Otherwise I would never get to see new pictures of my adorable niece. Whatever.

Anywho, now it is time to go and halve and pit the giant box of apricots that I was just given. I am going to dry all or most of them with my borrowed dryer (and see if I will need to buy my own dryer) and make apricot kuchen. I will post pictures tonight or in the morning. It is the tastiest thing ever. Ever.