Not to worry....I've been here but busy and not really chatty.
Working on the End of August financials and trying to get everyone back into a school year routine.
So then the high school gave the kids a 4 day Weekend. Oh, thanks for thwarting my evil plan school district! I
really appreciate that......
Hubs took the day off too so we took a ride to the Farm Stand on Friday and loaded up on ingredients for making Pepper Relish.
A bushel of peppers, 25lbs. of onions, 1 watermelon, 1 cantaloupe, 6 cucumbers and 2 zucchinis later I am $31.50 more broke-r.
But look at all those beauties.....
Friday was all about the opening football game of the year. "Our" team hosted the #1 team in the conference so the Band had a bigtime food concession going which Hubs worked. It wore him out so Saturday was spent icing muscles.lol #2 Son worked hard at staying in formation during the marching band performance. The Band was great, the football team?....not so much.....not that I care about football..... ;-)
Daughter helped me grocery shop on Friday.....let me rephrase that.....Daughter helped me overspend my grocery budget for August on Friday. There,
that's more accurate. lol
Saturday while Hubs was recuperating from his concession ordeal I had a Canning Day! I was making Pepper Relish year.
This is such a labor intensive process that I like to make enough to last 2 years so I only have to do this every other year. It would be great if someone around here would help out with this.
They are all great consumers of this product but as soon as I drag out the equipment and produce, you can't find a one of the family to take part in the creation of this heavenly foodstuff.
Why is that?
First I had to chop all my ingredients into tiny bits..............
I about filled a 5 gallon bucket with bits! Next time stirring it with a boat oar rather than a puny little wooden spoon might be smarter on my part.
I must say that now that I have a
food processor this part of the process only takes a quarter of a day instead of the full
12 hour day it use to take me when I had to do it all. by. hand. That used $8 processor I won at the Church auction 2 years ago is paying for itself bigtime now!lol
Then it's time to salt the veggies and let the moisture leech out for an hour while I get the syrup ready and the jars and lids sterilized.
Cook down the liquid, plop the relish into the jars and boil in a water bath canning pot and you get this......
I ended up with 11 quarts, 1 pint worth.....
That's a 2 year supply with enough leftover for my sister in-law's Christmas gift.
The quart sized jars in back are for her, though 3 jars won't last her much past Feb. since she likes this stuff so much she eats it straight outta the jar with a spoon!
Ick.
That and a nap was basically my Saturday.
What a production!
Sunday I was up extremely early and took some photos out on the deck while my morning glories were open.
I haven't bought morning glory seeds in years now. I just let the volunteer plants wither and drop seeds from their pods each Fall and every Spring I get beautiful new flowers.
You can see the fuzzy ass of a bumblebee in that center bloom. He was not amused at having his posterior photographed and let me know it when he came outta there! lol
I'll miss these beauties in a few weeks when they start dying off.....sigh
I accompanied Hubs to an indoor flea market later Sunday morning so he could check out a New Age store there. He decided to take the bypass as a "short cut" to get there. Of course, he didn't know where to get off the bypass so the "short cut" ended up taking us on the scenic route through about 3 little towns, as we went waaaay past where the flea market was held on our "short cut". I just turned my head to the window and rolled my eyes silently at the passing scenery.
Men.....
We went early before the heat got bad. I got some exercise walking around and a new bumper sticker for my car.
We also picked up some COC at the FM and had it with our burgers, dogs and potato salad at our Sunday evening cook-out.
Monday was spent on more garden chores--Hubs had picked a
huge amount of green beans on our vine plants the last few days. He surprised me by blanching and bagging them all while I was napping Monday afternoon. He filled 5 freezer bags.....thanks honey!
I cut up, bagged and froze the rest of the red bell peppers, I didn't use in the relish, for use later this winter.
1 bag of diced peppers and 4 bags of slices.
We also got a few swims in, in the pool and some tomatoes picked. Lunch on Monday was BLTs using fresh tomatoes from the garden.
Horror upon horrors though when I saw that we were down to our last three packs of bacon in the freezer....EEK!
I haven't loaded up on bacon in ages.
Now I'm on a quest for a bacon deal.
Ya know.....it's always something, isn't it?
Tuesday's dinner was suppose to be Alfredo Primavera but I substituted Stuffed Green Peppers and Stuffed Zucchini for dinner. I had a leftover Zuke after making 5 loaves of Zucchini Bread and I had 2 green bell peppers put aside from my bushel of peppers I bought to make stuffed peppers for Hubs.
I just forgot to put the peppers meal on the menu. We'll bump something else on there off later in the week.
I still need to make pickles and cut up the watermelon we got at the farm stand. That will be on today's agenda. I'll also be making Lemon Crisp Cookies and Chocolate Chip Cookies.
I don't know what's gotten into me......I'm all Betty Freakin' Crockerish suddenly!
Sluggy
