Fluff & Fold Report-late holiday weekend edition
Plain and simple, this has been a most uneventful week. It's even had the decency to be uneventful in a good way (in other words, it's been pleasant, not boring).
Nicole called Monday to see if she could spend the night on Tuesday. Now that she's in the vet tech program at MSU she's living at her dad's in East Lansing. Her internship is here in Farmington Hills, though, as is a writer's group that she belongs to. As it will save her both gas and sleep time I hope she'll come stay with us on most Tuesdays. Besides, I get to missing her.
Paul's been on call this week, so we've been homebodies. We haven't even gone out to eat this week. That's probably a good thing considering both the freezer and the canning cupboard are still awfully full for this time of year. We're going to be in need of room for new items soon.
I'm very surprised how many canned tomatoes I have left this year. The salsa I canned turned out to be such a great shortcut cooking sauce (I've used it in everything from chili to sloppy joes to a quickie version of Country Captain Chicken) that I've started to reach for that instead of regular tomatoes. This year I plan to make even more of the salsa and cut back on the regular canned tomatoes. As delicious as it was, I'm not going to make sauce this year. I just don't have that kind of time. Mom said she'll take a few cans of tomatoes off my hands. She's had to buy store bought tomatoes for a couple months now.
I've had more than a couple offers to take other goodies off our hands, too, and requests for exactly what everybody wants me to be sure to can this year. The most popular requests have been Dilly Beans (pickled green beans), Maple Apple Jam, Peach Chutney and everybody wants the salsa. I want to try my hand at watermelon rind pickles this year. I had them once down south, and was surprised that I liked them. Paul and my mom will both be ecstatic if I pickle beets, too. I'm not so much for the beets, but I can always use the leftover liquid after the beets are gone to pickle eggs. I know. I'm odd. You're just realizing this?
Things are going quite well in the garden. Things are blossoming like crazy. Peppers and tomatoes are setting fruit. The chard never did come up, so we replanted that bed with the sweet potato slips that Aunt Cliffie sent home. I'm not sure how well they're going to do. When I was last at the garden on Friday morning they didn't look particularly spritely. On the other hand, at least they didn't look worse than when we put them in.
I haven't been to the garden since Friday morning. I'm starting to suffer withdrawl. Guess where I'll be going after work tonight?
I'm getting more and more excited about Farmfest this year. My niece Ashley and her daughter may be joining us. I think that will be a blast.
I give. I can't think straight. We have an alarm that goes off when one of the security cameras goes down. Unfortunately, one of the cameras is very prone to breaking down, and every time it breaks communication with the recording device the alarm goes off---which means the alarm has been going off pretty much continuously for the most of the afternoon.