Ordinary Time

Do these give you some clues? That's a half bushel of sweet peppers. Pickling cucumbers  If you guessed making and canning sweet pickle relish you'd be correct. I will probably also make bread and butter pickles because we go through them quickly and they're not something you can dobuy in the store. If I still have cucumbers left over, I'll probably make some dill pickles as well. They're actually the quickest of the pickles I make. And maybe I'll decide we need a lot more dill pickles, in which case I'll have to go buy more cucumbers.  The relish is not going to use up all those peppers, but the price was far too good to pass up. I'll slice/chop and freeze them in recipe sized amounts. Did you know you can do that? Freeze them as is then put them in recipes where they'll be cooked? The same goes for onions. Neither would be good to eat raw, but they're fine in things. Plus, it's super easy to just take pre-chopped peppers or onions out of yo...

Today was the day that H., R., and I headed out on a major grocery shopping expedition. The closest Asian markets near me are about half an hour away. Plus, they are not on the way to anything I regularly drive to, so require a special trip. I put this off as long as possible, but eventually I do need to restock. With the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival on Friday, I needed to go to get mooncakes. (Y. has made them before but with school and work, she doesn't have a lot of free time.) It had been a long time since I had gone, so supplies were low. I knew it was going to be painful. First stop was the Chinese market and it was as painful as I was expecting. We then drove a mile east to hit up Patel Brothers. This wasn't as bad, but was still significant. I've just now finished repackaging and putting things away.  Here is most of what we brought home. You can't see the 50# bag of rice or the things already in the refrigerator. Mooncakes packages always get put inside their own s...

And what was the little bit of panic? It was realizing that I needed to submit my application to have items in the holiday market by Oct. 2. In theory this shouldn't be a problem, but I need to submit photographs. (It's a juried sale.) I don't have the guest towels I'm going to weave finished so I don't have a photograph. Today is September 21st which is not that very far away from October. If I was going to get my application in, I needed to get a move on.  Which is why I spent quite a few hours yesterday dressing my loom. I did have my warp measured out and my project planned, so that was something, but there is still a lot that needs to happen. I managed to sley the reed, thread the loom, and get the warp wound on yesterday. Today was a bit nuts, so all I managed to get to was to tie up the treadles and begin to get the front of the project tied in. I did discover one section of crossed threads, but I decided to leave that until tomorrow. I really hope I can be w...

We did indeed have apple fritters for breakfast.  G. made them with our own apples and the glaze has cider and bits of apple in it. They were delicious. It was very nice to come in from cleaning the barn in very wet weather and be able to enjoy a freshly made apple fritter. Teaching your children to cook pays off. 

It's rained most of the day and there was very little on the calendar. J. and I decided it was time we dealt with the apples that had taken up residence in our kitchen. We opted to make and can caramel apple pie filling with the decent ones and press the others for cider. I'm happy to report that the many baskets of apples have been processed. The total? Seven pints of caramel apple pie filling, which all sealed. The remainder of the apples produced a gallon and a half of cider. No picture of that, though. It was a low yield year mainly because the apples ripened far earlier than I expected or was able to do something with them and many has fallen before we realized it. I suppose this means that I should make a note in the calendar for next August to start thinking about apples. Because who doesn't want to process apples during a heat wave?  As I had a suspicion would happen, opening up my canning recipe book has kicked my brain into preserving mode. I spent a little time t...

I'm not sure there will be much to share as it has been a quiet week.  I really dislike books with unreliable narrators. It is especially annoying when you only start to get the hint in the last 75 pages. Then to add insult to injury, the book ends the moment before the foreman of the jury is about to read the verdict and the last line of the book is, "Guilty or not guilty? You decide." And that's it. Absolutely no closure after nearly 400 pages. I've been sputtering about it all day. Ducks are hilarious. They also like to stay out until after dark. But then they can't find the door of the pen without someone shining a light on it. L. suggested outfitting them all with little head lamps. How cute would that be? I love listening to my children's stories about odd things that happen at work. L. and A. seem to collect the oddest experiences. It's just me, R. and H. at home on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It's very quiet... and a little odd. J. and I spend ...