I Am...the Queen of Quite a Lot...

Fridge magnet I found today at the little antique/thrift store here in town. I thought it said it all.   LOL


  Been a very busy week here. More canning--  beets, blackberry juice (that came out of the freezer cleaning mess), bbq sauce, and --seems like something else. Oh, froze about 15 pounds of rainbow chard and another 6 quarts of bell peppers.  The blackberries were by far the worst. I pulled all bags of berries from the depths of freezer-world that were dated 2010 or earlier. Oh.  My.  God.  It was a water bath canner full of berries. My initial thought was to can juice from some and make jelly from some. And I tried to do this all in one day, when I had to be up at 6 the next morning to go away for the day.   Foolish, foolish girl.  I found a recipe for canning a blackberry lemonade concentrate, and thought--oh, that would be good.  So, I set to work at about 9 AM, cooking down berries, putting them in the blender and then through a strainer to remove the seeds.  (I had already decided against jelly.)  I wound up with 9 quarts of blackberry lemonade concentrate and 7 quarts of plain blackberry juice. At 2:30 AM.  By the time this day was over, I felt like someone had beaten me to death with a wooden mallet.  I was so exhausted... and when the Irishman woke me up at 5:30, I almost cried.  lol  But--I had to go meet up with my cousins to take a trip to southern Illinois. And I did.  And I really did okay, until the trip home. And especially the last 20 minutes, when I was driving from my cousins house top my house.  And when I got here, I came undone.


  I was in bed and dead asleep by 9:30, and didn't wake up until 9 o'clock the next morning.  And I felt like I'd been hit by a truck. I didn't eat right all day Thursday and then that night I binged on carbs...it was almost comical, except that I was such a mess. I ate cheese raviolis with butter and garlic powder and black pepper. I ate half of a Marie Callender  chicken pot pie. And I ate a small dish of cookie dough ice cream.  This may not sound so bad...but I have not eaten hardly any dairy, wheat or sugar in the past 3 months.  But I'm telling you...those raviolis were heavenly...lol   And I felt sickish all day Friday.  lol  I was a maniac....


  So...let's see...ah.  The boy brought home a stainless steel Kenmore grill last week. He said he knew we were talking about it being time for a new grill (ours is about 14 years old and VERY well used).  Someone he knew said he could have it if he wanted it, that it wasn't any good anymore, but maybe he could scrap it. Let me tell you...that nut didn't fall far from the tree.  He's just like me--he took it, of course. He unloaded it here and started tinkering and looking at it and said--this guy's an idiot.  It did need parts, as the guy had loaded it with lava rocks and burned through the stainless steel burner tubes.  We came in here and went online and found the parts on Sears.com...but goodness they were expensive. Each tube was 30+ dollars (it has 4) and then the ceramic covers were another 45 dollars each (4 again) and it was going to cost over 250 dollars to get the parts. (To buy a replacement lid--which we didn't need, but just to give you an idea-- was FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS !!!!!!!!)  We went to Lowe's, and found universal replacement parts and got everything we needed for a whopping 70 bucks.  woohoo !  So, I am now the proud owner of a Kenmore stainless steel bbq grill that cost me 70 dollars.   I love that boy !!



  Okay, the Irishman just pulled in the driveway.  I made a big pot of vegetable beef soup today and just finished a batch of 30 minute yeast rolls. I made them with spelt flour, so I can have them. They turned out pretty good.  We'll be having supper before long....

  Have a royal weekend...


Namaste.