Yesterday

Split rail fence at the Abraham Lincoln Birthplace Memorial National Park

April, 2008

Yesterday morning I woke up and after doing my regular morning routine chores went into the dining room to get more apples to wash and cut up to make sauce. And there were ants!! They must have come in with the apples, and then they were attracted to the sweetness of the apple juice from the peeler. I was so grossed out by the ants that I put a pause to every other activity and wiped down the table and chairs and all the legs with bleach water, and mopped with bleach water. Of course, the apples are waiting for me on the porch now, in case that's where the ants came from. I haven't seen any ants in the house since, so I hope that it worked to keep them from infesting.

Anyway, after I did that, I got the slow cookers going full of apples for sauce, but they weren't soft enough till after dinner, so I just put them in the fridge and I'm planning to strain and can them today. I also have twelve pounds of tomatoes to strain and can as well. We had storms yesterday, so I brought in all the ripe tomatoes before they could get blown off the plants. I'd planned to do tomato sauce yesterday, but wanted the apples and tomatoes to be ready at the same time, so I wouldn't have to boil the big pot twice.

So, instead of canning, I mixed up a double batch of chocolate chip cookie dough and froze it in the dough balls for quick snacks and desserts, like when company comes by, and for when Adam visits at the end of Oct. This makes homemade cookies soooo simple. I just use the dough scoop and scoop all the dough onto a big wax paper lined sheet pan. Then I put it in the freezer till they're all hard, and put them all into a big freezer bag for storage. I've found that this is much easier for me than trying to make logs or squares of frozen dough to cut apart later.

I did a lot of laundry yesterday as well, and in between folding and hanging, I knit quite a bit, finishing a couple dishcloths. I've been making dishcloths for Julie and I'm pretty much done with those. Actually, I've already made plenty of them, it's just that the OCD part of me doesn't want to stop until both balls of yarn are entirely gone. I'm hoping to finish the last one today.

I watched some episodes of a new-to-me show yesterday called Jericho. It was on a year or two back on CBS and got cancelled, but they've put it on netflix instant viewer, so I decided to check it out. It's interesting. It's a doomsday senario, town split off from the rest of the world, sort of story. I had to laugh though, because it's toward the end of summer at the beginning of the show, and they're all talking about where the food will come from, and how to ration the corn crop. And I'm like, plant something? Like greens, or turnips? How come no one's putting in a garden? lol, I know it's just tv, but I can tell you that would be one of my first reactions. That, and to buy all the rice and flour and sugar and beans I could find. Instead, everyone's eating velveeta and wheat thins.

So, that's the latest news around here. Not exactly thrilling, but I'm not exactly a thrill seeker. Today I'd like to can the applesauce and the tomato sauce, sew in all the ends on these many new dishcloths I've made, and maybe start another batch of applesauce going in the slowcookers. I also have to remember to put beans to soak for tonights Red Beans with Rice. Maybe if I find the time after those things, I'll work on my Fall embroidered banner, or get out the fall and Halloween decorations and decorate the house. It's practically October now, so I can decorate without feeling too early!

Done with the Stove

Well, I'm done for today anyway. I made my experimental jelly, though I'm afraid it's come out a bit too sweet, and canned my applesauce. My broth is strained and resting in the fridge so I can take the fat off of it before it goes in the freezer. And the kitchen is pretty much clean, as long as you don't count the jelly stains all over the rug and the dish drainer piled heaping high with pots and canning epuipment.

I'm now settled on the couch with my Martha's Halloween Ideas dvd from netflix, my knitting, and a bottle of water. And I'm not moving again till tonight! Ben's going to have to make pizza without me. I trust him. On second thought, I don't really.... maybe I'll try to talk him into something that won't dirty as many dishes. Like nachos or ice cream sundaes.

Slaving Over a Hot Stove

Obviously, I would never in a million years really complain about cooking, since it's one of my favorite things to do, but so far today this is turning into one of those days that is pretty much spent entirely in the kitchen. And since it's such a nice cool fall day, I'm enjoying that very much. I've got apples in the slowcooker getting ready to become sauce. I learned the hard way not to use the stove-top, and I'm back to smaller batches with assured results.
I've got some chicken stock set up and simmering, made from some thigh bones left from shredded meat for fajitas and some wing tips I found when I cleaned out the freezer the other day.
And I made a X6 batch of banana bread with the bananas that I cleaned out of the freezer too. As you can see, I ran out of baking dishes and resorted to a bundt shape. Maybe I'll bring that one over to the neighbors this afternoon. There's definately not room in the freezer for it.

I'm planning to spend the rest of the day finishing these things, and maybe embroidering a bit if I finish the canning before Ben finishes work. I've got apple juice that I boiled off the cores and peels of the first bushel waiting to become jelly, plus the couple quarts of sauce I'll get from that crock pot of apples to process. And then after Ben's finished with work, we're headed off to do a little grocery shopping and stop by the library.

BeppyCat Acres This Morning

I've been wanting to name our little homestead, like Tara or Twelve Oaks, but I haven't yet come up with anything very appropriate. Maybe I'd better plant some more trees, so I can have something to name the place after.

I wanted to post some recent pictures of the chickens, since they're so big and grown up now. They don't hold still very well in the morning, because they're so happy to be out in the open again, I think. Not that chickens hold still any time of day.

So the pictures aren't exactly clear. But you can see how well they've grown and how their markings look.

I think they're really pretty birds, all cream and brown and red. They're always a bit agitated when they see us though. My dad says that's because they always get treats when they see us, so they're calling us.

This morning they got an armful of clover.

They loved getting the pumpkin and squash guts on Monday.
They love to perch on the board at the end of the wooden part of their yard. Which makes me think I'll have to scrub it and re-paint it at least once or twice a year. They're not exactly clean animals.
We're convinced that they clover is a big part of what makes they're eggs so good. They love it, and never even touch their crumbles if they have enough clover to eat. It's too bad there's not a way to keep the clover for them over the winter. If it weren't so mixed in with the woody kinds of weeds in the back, I'd consider cutting the back meadow and letting it dry.
The extension yard that Ben made is a bit cobbled together and messy looking for now. But he's planning to add some short sides to the wooden part to block those spaces, and I'm going to work on making a tarp to replace the blankets soon. The blankets are there because there are kind of big spaces at the top of the pen that the chickens like to try to fly through. I'll make the tarp to make a sort of roof over the pvc and bungee at the corners down to the bottom of the pen. I just need one more empty feed bag to have enough.

I'm also planning to work out a flap on the side of the pen so it'll be easier to get the feeder and water in and out. Right now, we have to unstake the pvc section and move it altogether in order to get inside the pen for anything. I picked up some boat cover snaps a couple of weeks ago when Joann's had notions on sale, but I'm still trying to work out the details of my plan. Finishing those will be first on the list for after all the apples and tomatoes have been dealt with, so maybe next week, I'll be sewing tarps.

Bad Blogger!

I am a bad blogger because I completely forgot to take any pictures at all of my lunch buffet or of our apple processing party! But I'm sure you can imagine them. For the sandwich set up, I used four trays; one for breads (whole wheat bagels, french rolls, and tortillas), one for the meats and cheeses (provolone, cheddar, and co-jack, ham, turkey breast, salami, and pepperoni), one for all the condiments and one for the veggie toppings and acoutrement (lettuce, tomato, cucumber, celery and carrot sticks, dill pickles, green pepper, and onion). To get a good idea of how the apple processing went, see this post, and just imagine four people and about ten times as many apples. My apple peeler is getting quite the work out this week.

This morning I got to do more pumpkins and squash. One was getting a soft spot, and I was afraid they'd all follow, so I had to pick the pumpkins, and Ben donated his acorn squashes to the pumpkin puree for pies and pancakes and muffins cause. He's very self-less. Here's my post on processing pumpkins and squash.
A fair amount of the apples we stocked up on are destined for the dryer. I want to have plenty of dried apple pieces for snacking on, and also for apple bits in muffins and cakes and such as well. My dehydrator will hold eight apples at a time, and it takes 6-8 hours to get them dry enough. So you can imagine that I'll have it going all the time this week. The plums are some that Ben bought a couple of weeks ago at the Farmers' Market, and sort of forgot to eat. They were getting sort of soft, so I figured it would be best to do something with them.
Here are some finished dried apples in a quart jar. The apples will keep just fine for quite awhile in an air tight container like this on the pantry shelf. For long term storage, they could also be put into the freezer, but I'm planning to just put my extra jars in the unheated part of our attic until I open them.

I'm getting really convinced of how great canning jars are for regular storage and freezing. They're glass, so there's no worry about weird plastic chemicals getting into food, and they're reusable, so there's no cost in landfill space or money when one is emptied, and all the quart jars we have were free to us to begin with, thanks to my generous mother in law and a friend in the Homemaker's club!

I packed the pumpkin puree from today into pint and quart jars for the freezer as well. All those 19 quarts of pie filling went into freezer bags though, because, unfortunately, I don't have the freezer room for that many jars in there. But if I ever get an upright, I'd like to phase out the bags as much as possible.

A Reward

I've finished my week of big projects, and now that that has come to an end, I get a reward. Today our friends Ken and Beth are coming over to process apples with us! I'm pretty excited to be getting my hands on three bushels of apples as well. Next will will probably be full of apple posts.

I set up lunch as a sandwich buffet sort of thing so that I could do everything ahead of time and there wouldn't be any cooking mess in the kitchen while we were making the pie filling and all. I'll post pictures tomorrow or Monday of how I prepared it all.

Ben picked beets and turnips to roast yesterday, so the harvest tally got another big jump. I'm sure you're enjoying that, right Julie?

We've been getting four normal sized eggs a day for the last number of days, and started giving them out to the neighbors yesterday.

Yesterday we planted quite a few flowers and things that a friend from the homemakers' club gave me. She'd given me a rose of sharon in the spring, but it got mowed a time or two, and wasn't coming back, and she had a bigger one she needed to pull out, so we went over and dug it up and put it in place of the dead one. She also had some flowers that are pink that she called forever flowers that she needed to divide, so she gave us some of those. I think it's the same thing my mom calls a live-forever-never-die. I put them by the fences at either side of the end of the driveway.

When I walked out the door to put out the mail yesterday morning, I walked full on into a spider web that had been built stretching all the way across the doorway from the top to about a third of the way down. UGH! I got a face full of web. I'm pretty sure when a spider makes a web like that, they've moved on to the "most dangerous game". It looked about big enough to catch me!

Ben took yesterday off from work and did lots of yard work and random repairs around the house. He wanted to till in some of the sections of the garden, but the ground is still decidedly muddy from all that leftover hurricane rain we got last Sunday. So he pulled all the weeds in the dog run and trimmed the wisteria instead. It looks so good now that he's done that!

In case anyone's wondering, yesterday's deep cleaning projects for the fall cleaning push were to vaccum the entire couch and all of the cushions really well, and wash down the walls and fixtures and clean in the guest bathroom.

Fall Cleaning is Almost Complete

Yesterday I mowed quite a bit of the lawn and then cleaned all the flower beds in front of the house, to get the outside looking nice. There's still a bit more weeding to do along the drive way, but the house is more welcoming now with the path to the front door no longer overgrown.

I picked up all the rugs and moved all the furniture and swept and mopped the rest of the floors today, as well as wiping down and cleaning all the cabinet doors and fronts. I'm starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel of my fall deep cleaning project. I have to do the guest bathroom tomorrow, washing the fixtures and walls, that sort of thing, and then next week I'll move on to cleaning the carpet on the stairs and in Ben's office upstairs. After that, I think I'll be almost finished, except for heavy duty dusting of everything, like picture frames, and tops of door frames and such. I'm debating about washing all the windows. I just don't usually do windows, lol. I also am deciding whether I want to empty the cupboards and cabinets and pantry and change the shelf paper and re-organize. At the moment, I'd say no. But that's just because I'm tired from all the floor polishing this morning.

My driving practice is continuing. For now, I've just been going along the back roads, and I figure I'll keep that up till I'm really comfortable with operating the car and don't feel panic-y when I have to drive it. Today I took a drive past a farm not far from here with lots of animals, like emu's and things. They were out feeding the cows bread (the farmers, not the emus). That made me laugh, because it looked like one of the cows had a sandwich in it's mouth, looking up at me.

The neighbors to the back brought their little girl over to look at the chickens this afternoon. She was really excited about them, which I thought was sweet. She just kept looking at them and saying they were cute. I found that funny too, because that's about the last word I'd use for them. They're pretty, but not exactly cute at all.

Adam bought tickets to come visit me! He'll be here at the end of October, and I'm pretty excited to have my little brother around for Halloween. Even though he doesn't really like it, I think he'll humor me and go along with my pumpkin carving and eating off of ghost plates.

There are a million butterflies around right now. They flutter everywhere all around where ever I walk. It's like I'm a disney heroine, with the butterflies floating along in my wake. They're really pretty, and not all the same either, there's monarchs, and yellow ones, and bright blues ones too. The neighbors said their little boy would be excited to seem them all becauase he loves bugs. I told them I had some beautiful tomato hornworms that he was welcome to come and find.

I've got another full day planned for tomorrow. We're making whole wheat bagels for sandwiches for our company on Saturday. Plus a plain loaf of bread, and pie crusts so they'll be ready for pie filling after we've done our processing and we can have fresh apple pie. I'm planning to serve a sort of make your own sandwich bar with deli meats and cheese and different bread choices for lunch. That way, I can prepare everything ahead of time, and will just have to pull out the trays when we get hungry, and not worry about cooking. I'll try to remember to take pictures and let you all know how it goes.

This afternoon, I'm working on embroidering my "Fall" banner. I've been trying to get to it since, last week, and I worked straight all morning just to insure I'd have my work done and could set aside a couple of hours to embroider. I've got it all hooped and ready to go, with the colors picked out, so I can get right to work while I listen to "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" that I just downloaded from the libraries audiobooks. I hope all of you have something lovely in your afternoons as well!

Learning to Drive

My neighbor called me this morning because she had had to call the ambulance for her mother. She's got a sore on her leg that bleeds, and she couldn't get it stopped. They came out and dressed it and she's got an appointment to see a specialist for it tomorrow. So, any prayers for her are appreciated.

But (not to sound like I'm selfish, because this is in addition to my concern for my neighbor) I realized more than ever that I really have to re-learn to drive and get comfortable driving. Because the whole reason they needed me was to follow the ambulance and bring her home if the took her to the ER (which they didn't), since her daughter had to be at work. And I seriously did not want to. Not one little bit. It's gotten to the point where I pretty much panic at the thought of driving a car anywhere. And that's just not good. And it definately doesn't follow in with my goals of being a useful capable person. I'm just completely unsure of how to get over this fear and learn to drive with confidence.

So, other than figuring out how to start driving lessons and overcome automobile related panic attacks, I've got other plans for the day too. The ladies who gave me the free grapes last week got some free apples from their neighbors and passed the extras on to me, so I'll be peeling them and cooking them down for apple sauce today. There's should be about enough for a quart. I don't know if I'll bother processing it, or just put it right into the fridge for immediate eating. It doesn't really seem worth bringing the giant pot to a boil for just one jar of applesauce, especially since we don't have any in the fridge right now.

I'm also hoping to get the living room floor completely swept and mopped. As in, "move all the furniture and clean the baseboards" swept and mopped. Yesterday I scrubbed down the oven and stove top and microwave and sink. I've been trying to get some deep cleaning finished one big job at a time. It's a chilly day, and scrubbing floors will definately keep me warmed up.

I'm also planning to head back over to the neighbor's this afternoon to watch Days of Our Lives with her and check on her to make sure she hasn't started bleeding again. Her daughter will be back home at four, and her son in law leaves for work at eleven, so it'll be good timing if I spend an hour or so with her at two.

There was a squishy egg in the box this morning. I think one of the youngest chickens is just starting laying, and the shell didn't develop. Or, if that keeps happening, they need more oyster shell for calcium. But they get layer feed and we give them oyster shell once a week, plus I've been tossing the egg shells back in for them, so I'm leaning toward the undeveloped pullet egg explanation.

I'd like to get some knitting done, but the tendonitis is still bugging me. My doctor pretty much just suggested ibuprofen and not moving it as the cure. I'm not really happy with that, but I suppose if there's nothing they can do to fix it, I don't want them doing things just to make me happy.

I guess I'm just feeling sort of off today, and no wonder, with the way my day started. Plus, I've been feeling slightly odd and unmotivated lately, I think it's mostly because I'm super sleepy, and I think that's because the dose on my synthroid may be off. I'm hoping that getting a good amount of work in this morning, then visiting with my neighbor and assuring myself that she's okay, and then resting this afternoon before Ben gets home will be the combination I need to feel better.

Hurricane Leftovers

I've wasted my computer time reading other blogs this morning, and I have a dr's appt. that I have to get ready for, so this won't be a long post. Here are some highlights from the weekend:

• Found apple sellers at the farmers' market who will sell me seconds for $10 a bushel to make sauce and pie filling-arranged to get them next week
• Huge rainstorm of leftover Ike flooded the yard, but the water's gone down a lot... everything's just squishy and musty now
• Three Eggs in One Day!
• Sunflowers are blooming, hoping for seeds to roast
• Corn is a terrible undersized wormy mess. I've given up on eating it, but the chickens love it.
• The weeds have pretty much officially taken over the garden, and I'll be happy just to save my tomatoes.
• We saw The House Bunny. It was pretty funny.
• Mucked out the chicken house Sat. It was easier than I'd have thought.
• Having an apple preserving party with our friends Ken and Beth this weekend... Lots of cleaning to do to have a presentable kitchen before then!
• Tendonitis flaring up. Totally sucks. Kept me from making bagels yesterday, since I can't knead.
• Loving the cooler temperatures, but Ben thinks we might have to ripen the tomatoes inside if they keep up.
• I'll post the menu plan for this week later on.
• Just hit my time limit, have to go get ready!

The Thrill of Counting the Pings!

I love these opalka tomatoes! The lady we bought the plants from at the farmers' market was not kidding when she said they'd be good sauce tomatoes. I hardly had to cook them down after I ran them through the victorio.
My five pounds of opalkas yielded six cups of sauce. Otherwise known as a quart and a pint. I seasoned it with dehydrated chopped garlic, and I'm afraid I added too much. I always forget how much it swells when it rehydrates! This is pretty much pizza sauce for us, we add any other seasonings right to the pizza under the cheese, since we both have very different tastes when it comes to the Italian herbs.
He did this himself. Please tell me every cat is this weird?

I'm planning a pretty quiet day today. I have a few small things to take care of this morning, like making egg salad and a loaf of bread and cleaning the ceiling fans, but after that, I'm planning to just cycle through as much laundry as I can and embroider. Ben may take an hour or two off this afternoon, so maybe we'll go out or something. But it's homemade pizza night, Ben's favorite night of the week, so we won't go far, that's for sure.

It's another rainy thunder-y sort of day. I actually enjoy that sometimes though, because it helps me appreciate a sunny day a bit more. I usually can't stand the sunny days, they're always too hot for me!

I'm feeling better this week than I have in quite a while. I'm very tired of course, with the extra bits of cleaning and all the canning, but I think that I'm so glad to feel accomplished. It really seems to make all the difference when I feel tired for a reason. I'm going to have to talk to the dr. at my appt. on monday about whether my medicine is making me tired, because I've been feeling sluggish all summer, which is pretty much since my last appt. And I have a very hard time getting past that and getting things done anyway, so then I feel bad for slacking, etc. A very hard cycle to break. So I'm pretty grateful that the grapes and tomatoes made an appearance this week, because I couldn't ignore them without wasting them. Just the jump start I needed.

I'd better head into the kitchen and get the eggs boiling and the fans cleaned now, since the sooner I finish all that, the sooner I get to settle in with a book or work on my embroidery.

It's Peanut Butter Jelly Time!

I ended up with 8lbs. of usable grapes after I sorted and cleaned them, and that made 15 half-pint jars of the low sugar grape jam. I was trying to be as sparing with the sugar as possible (I used honey, but I didn't have enough, only half a cup or so... Julie, you gotta hook me up, lol), so I'm a little concerned that it might be too tart, but I suppose I'll deal with that when I come to it. I can always melt it back down and add sugar to it if need be. Also, I think my strainer may have grated the seeds into the puree a little, but I'll just pretend it's like strawberry seeds or something.
I'm such a messy canner. Ben does a much better job.
I'm not worried at all about it not jelling, it was jelled on the ladle and the sides of the pan when I was finished, so I think that part will come out just fine.

Here's today's project: opalka tomatoes. I think this will be just enough for a quart of sauce. I'll bet the suspense is killing you all. :D

Yesterday was a very busy day, with my jam making and a meeting of the homemakers' club, I didn't get the chance to sit down and relax till about six when Ben got home. He walked in just after the last jar had pinged, and I'd balanced the last big pot on the pile in the dish drainer. Then he was super sweet and made me dinner. Today, I'm glad just to have the sauce to do, and to not need to go anywhere. Well, I might do green beans while the sauce reduces, but that's not really hard at all.

It was also a red letter day. We got two eggs in one day! They had been coming one a day, but I guess that means things are picking up!

I posted an add on craigslist today looking to barter apples for processing. I don't know if anyone will take me up on it, but I really want to be able to put up lots of apples, and that seems like a fairly cheap way of getting some. I might try posting on freecycle again, but I'm not sure how often a person can make the same request on there. Once a week? Anyone know the ettiquette?

I'm still working on my pi shawl. I want to get it finished before the really cold weather comes, but now there's so many stitches on it, each round takes me about an hour! It's perfect knitting for watching tv or reading. I keep thinking about starting another one when this one is finished! I suffer from craft-project ADD. Speaking of which, I might set aside the knitting this afternoon and work on the fall and Halloween embroidered banners. I've put those out of my mind ever since the two different reds in the flag banner mishap, but I think enough time has passed, and I'll talk myself into going out of order so I can have the cute Halloween one in time. My project ADD will have to fight and beat my project OCD.

Gleaning

Our First Dinner of Our Own Eggs!

9-9-08

Yesterday was a pretty full day for me. I started out washing and seasoning all of our cast iron pans and skillets, and then set up a loaf of bread to bake in the bread machine. After that, I headed for the bathrooms to scrub them top to bottom. It took me all morning to thoroughly clean the master bathroom, but it's so nice in there again, and the big whirlpool tub is clean and disinfected and ready to use. It went really quickly though, since I was listening to a book on my mp3 player.

We had omelets made with our own eggs and with veggies from the garden for dinner. That was a very satisfactory kind of meal.

My Gleaned Grapes 9-9-08

The exciting thing that happened yesterday involves grapes. I posted a request on Freecycle for apples or fruit that people weren't planning to use, and a woman replied that her mom had some grape vines she wasn't planning to pick, and I could have the grapes! Then her mom ended up picking them for me and bringing them to the house, since I'm not far from her daughter and she was going to visit her anyway! I'm very grateful, even if I don't get anymore answers to my request. I'm guessing there's probably ten pounds of grapes here!

So, it's plain what my project for the day will be. I'm trying a new kind of pectin with my grapes today. Pomona's Pectin is a product that gels with calcium instead of sugar, so you can make no sugar added jams and jellies. Or use honey, etc. I'll be winging it a bit, because I want to make Grape Jam and the recipes listed are for jelly or butter, but I'm pretty sure I can do the grape butter recipe without the extra spices and get jam.

I also have a meeting of the homemakers' club today, so I'll be splitting my jam making into two parts. This morning I'll clean and sort the grapes, wash them, and cook them down. Then this afternoon I'll run them through the strainer, make the jam and can them.

There are also many ripe tomatoes waiting on the kitchen table (we had to run out and rescue them from the hail Monday night), so they will become tomorrow's project, when there will be a few more ripe ones on the vines to get added in.

Lost Weekend

Flower at Lincoln Birthplace Memorial

Spring 2008

Ben has been out of town since Thursday, and he gets back today. I'm very excited to see him again. I miss him every time he has to travel, but especially this time because it was over the weekend, and longer than usual.

I did have an nice weekend even though he was gone, so it turned out okay. I got together with our friend Beth, from Ben's work, and we saw a Disney on Ice show on Friday night. I spent the night at her house and on Saturday we hit some craft stores and went and saw Momma Mia. It was such a good time, and a real treat to spend some girl time with a friend my own age! (It seems like just about any and all friends I've made since leaving college have been in the over fifty age range. Which is fine, as they are my friends, but one or two friends closer to my age, in my geographical location, tend to make life a bit more fun sometimes.) We also worked on making her a Spider Queen type tiara for Halloween. I'm really looking forward to seeing the finished project, it's going to be awesome.

Today I'm planning to get the house back together after my weekend of bachelorette-hood. I still haven't gotten started on that fall cleaning either! There are supposed to be some thunder storms today, so I'll might stay in and work on some of that detail cleaning as well. Tonight we're having omelets for dinner so we can eat our fresh eggs. I'll definately keep you updated about the taste!

The cats are out of food right now. Ben's bringing some home from work with him this afternoon, but I'm afraid there may be a full out panic before then. Pickles comes frantically running and crying every time I move. It's only a matter of time before she slaps me, screaming, "This afternoon?!?! How about I make you wait to eat till this afternoon? How would you like that?!?!", then knocks me to the ground and steals my PB&J.

I'm hoping this will be an exciting week of tomato sauce making, but first I'll have to pick up some lemon juice, and see if the tomato plants cooperate. I think that I may have just enough ripe ones to get started tomorrow or Wednesday. Of course, there will be pictures. I've never canned tomato sauce before, or even made it from scratch, so look forward to big messes. Also, the thrills and chills of the Victorio Strainer!

Well, I've been lazy long enough (all weekend, if you're counting), and I'd better get moving. But I look forward to catching up with all of you this week!

A Momentous Day

Today I gathered our first egg!

An Award and My Day

My friend Sarah at Blue Castle gave me this very nice award. I'm very flattered, because it's my very first blog award. Thanks so much!

I was planning to mow the lawn today, but it looks like it's going to be a stormy day today, so I'm going to get a jump on my other plans for the week instead.

This week I'm planning to do some fall cleaning. Mostly just because fall is my absolute favorite time of year, so I'm hurrying it along. I'm going to be using some Spring Cleaning lists that I found online, and probably just doing a room a day for however long that takes. I also thought that this would be a pretty good time to work on cleaning house, before the corn and the tomatoes and the pumpkins come in heavy and I'm busy canning and freezing.

I seem to be having a hard time shaking that nagging weird feeling I've been having. I'm not sure what it is, but I keep waking up with that feeling you'd get when you realized you hadn't finished your homework or hadn't studied well enough for an important test. I'm hoping that getting more done in my days will help shake that. Maybe I just feel like I should be going back to school, since it's back-to-school time. 18 years of school will get you into that kind of a habit, I suppose.