ZzzzzziiiiPPP! Thursday

 My little garden Faerie...she's retired from the grounds to the deck. lol

     This was a gift to me by a bunch of friends that came to stay at my house in North Carolina...from England, Scotland, Canada..and all over the US.  We had a big weekend gathering and party and had a great time. She holds a very dear place in my heart and gardens...I'll never forget all the fun and laughs trying to put her wings on...the wings are gone, broken in a fall during a windstorm. But she's still beautiful to me.

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  The hot temperatures have been back, and I am gambling by not watering this morning as we have a 40% chance of rain. We actually got 27 drops yesterday, all on my car windshield as I was driving down the hill to my house. I could smell it. But it never made it to the ground. sigh...

  Today's predicted high is 104 with a heat index of 110. Sweet lord.  Yesterday was 103. And I don't even WANT to know what the heat index was.  It's brutal. The demise of the crops is all over the news and they are predicting very high prices on everything this coming year. SO stock your pantries friends, while you can. I suspect it's gonna get rough...rougher than it already is. They had a news segment yesterday that showed a farmer digging down about 2 feet into the  crumbling dirt on the edge of his field and it was dry as  a bone. This will impact the price of all meat, dairy, you name it...I'm going to invest in a couple of extra boxes of powdered milk, a case or two of  canned evaporated milk (I really don't use a lot of dairy products anyway) but every now and then I need some for a recipe.   I'm thinking a case of canned salmon or tuna wouldn't be a bad thing either, even though we're not eating meat at home. Peanut butter is another good protein source, as long as you make sure to buy the natural stuff without all the shortening and sugar in it.   And dried beans are a mainstay. And rice. And things you can make a hundred meals out of if you have to.

 [ Here--help me down off this soapbox. My joints are a little creaky today...]  LOL

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   So, I'm gong next door in a bit to sit with my neighbors husband and try to keep him from wanting to go out in the heat.  It's gonna be a scorcher. Then when I am finished I will come home and can tomatoes and make jalapeno jelly.  The peaches out front are not as ready as I thought, although this weekend they should be. I'm going out back now and make a quick run through the tomatoes and feed the chickens some of the bolting lettuce, and then I'll be off to the neighbors house.

  Maybe I'll come back to this later this afternoon....so I'm going to leave it in the draft box...C YA!!!!

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  I'm Baaaaaccckkkkk!!!!!!!   lol

  Well, got neither tomatoes nor jelly done. Was at neighbors longer than I expected and by the time I got home it was time to start supper almost.  I ran the vacuum real quick and cleaned up a little and then made big plates of chicken nachos for supper. I used up quite a few tomatoes making fresh salsa to top the nachos.As we ate, and for a while afterwards, we watched The Forbidden Planet, a film made in 1956 that was my favorite movie as a kid. It was a hoot watching it tonight--all the special effects (that won awards back then) were so hokey and the whole thing--well, we laughed all the way through it. It starred Robby the Robot. 

  Himself is going on a Boy Scout camping trip for an overnight with his buddy, who has been asked to come because he is an NRA certified  something or other--I don't even want to know. But they will camp down in southern Missouri somewhere, and I'm sure they will have a ball. This is the guy he hikes with alot. So I'll have some time to myself this weekend...at least 24 hours. lol   I think they are leaving Friday afternoon and coming back sometime Saturday evening.

  I will get lots done this weekend I hope.  I broke down and bought another 2 cases of wide mouth pint jars the other day, and I need to buy some more lids. I had also found pectin (both liquid and powdered) on sale, so I stocked up on that. At some point, I plan to get last years blackberries out of the freezer and make jelly out of them.  I also want to make some more peach pit jelly this year. I am having a hard time finding jelly jars though and most of mine are in use.  I am also going to dehydrate some watermelon slices...that should be interesting. I have some in the fridge that isn't getting used fast enough. 

  Himself says the peaches will be ready to pick this weekend. Yay. 

  I saw a wonderful salad recipe on a cooking show today...it was fresh fava beans and fennel, in a lemon vinaigrette. It looked magnificent. I have to try it.

  Okay--I need to go to bed, I'm babbling.  Wanted to finish this up and get it posted. I'm pooped.  

  Happy Thursday, y'all. 

Namaste.

Holy hell. How did it get to be Tuesday already???? And where was I ???

  I've been in a canning warp, I think.  Let's see..the last time I posted was Saturday. Sunday I canned more tomatoes and salsa.On Monday I took a trip to Broom Orchard to see about peaches. They were outrageous...due to the price of gas, I'm guessing. 42.00/bushel this year for the freestone peaches. I bit the bullet and got them because they were gorgeous and I wanted to can some peach halves. Aren't they pretty?  I wound up with 10 quarts and 15 pints of peaches canned today. Our trees don't have much on them this year due to the bad storms during blossom time. The next batch that I get will be seconds from Calhoun County (a serious apple and peach growing area here along the Illinois River delta)...those are the ones I will freeze/can for pies and make jam from. They will be a lot cheaper (I hope). That will be sometime next week, I think. Tomorrow I will make Peach Pit Jelly. It's really good and uses up the peach peelings and pits to the very end of their usefulness. I love that.  lol  I've already got the pot of them cooking away..

  I have been freezing bell peppers, and a little okra. Getting ready to plant the second planting of green beans if the ground will ever get wet enough to get the seeds in. The Irishman has been cleaning up the beds of burned and battered dead plants. We are in our third week of record breaking heat. We have had more days over a hundred degrees than we have had since 1988...the heat index today was 116.  You can't do anything outside for more than about 10 minutes, the chooks are heat stressed, the dogs are heat stressed and the cats seem to be loving it. My front porch looks like a pet cemetery...all the cats laying around looking dead (and loving it), under the rockers, hanging off the rails...it's crazy.

I made a tamale pie today for supper in my electric skillet. Still haven't had the oven repaired, but I can manage for a while longer...property taxes are coming due and and had to replace my dryer and blah, blah, blah. It's okay. It makes me  do what I do best...IMPROVISE, BABY!!  lol  I wasn't real sure about the cornbread topping, but it cooked perfectly and all I did was add a little extra buttermilk to make it more easily pourable across the top of the ground beef ingredients. My husband loved it and ate more than half of it. He sheepishly said "It was really good--and I was really hungry!"  I think I'll put the recipe on my other blog...

 My 8 year old niece is coming next week to stay for 4 whole days. I am excited!!  I'm thinking up fun stuff to do...you know, the stuff old ladies need a kid to go do??  lol  I'm looking into The Magic House and the Butterfly House and any number of things going on across the river. I may see if she's interested in going to see the Abraham Lincoln Museum in Springfield...she just might. It's way cool, and I'd love to go there again.They have a part where there's a holographic President Lincoln and some Civil War soldiers and it blew my mind when I saw it the first time.

 I am working an extra day this week to make up for the 2 extra days I am taking off next week. I am tired already, lol  It's been a long day and my feet hurt and my pantries are filling up, so it's all worth it. I worked on my canning workshop booklet today and decided to put in a section of finding the place for a pantry in your house. It's coming along...I need to get more disciplined and make myself work on it for a prescribed amount of time EVERY SINGLE DAY.   sigh...it's hard to learn discipline at my age. lol

  Looks like we are going to put in some more kale and some turnips and green beans and maybe one more thing. Husbandman is talking a big talk and I just sit by and nod.  We'll see what happens....stay tuned.

Namaste.


 

Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled beets...

  And they were beauties. lol  One of my favorite things, and I have been out of the home canned ones in my pantry for a couple of years.This year I broke down and bought a 25 lb bag from a local gardener...for some reason I have not had good luck growing them in my garden here...yet. Probably need to work on the beds a couple more years and then they'll be grand. That's the thing about lasagna gardening...every year the beds get better and better, the compost gets richer and richer, and the garden gets magnificent.

   I'm only here blogging because  I'm stalling. I have a bushel of peaches in the kitchen screaming my name, a tub full of assorted peppers, tomatoes, green beans and okra that need tending, and a house that's too dirty for words.  My body hurts...I feel like a 90 year old woman...neck, shoulders, legs, ankles, knees...everything is stiff and sore from standing in front of my sink for hours on end. I'm on the lookout for one of those thick rubber restaurant mats to put there...too late to help much this year, but it will be a godsend next year. 

  My freezer is full.  My pantry shelves are nicely stocked.  After the peaches I am doing today and tomorrow, I will start making some chutneys and chow-chow relishes with all the green tomatoes. My friend Cathy has a recipe for green tomato pickles that uses the ones that are small and don't get the chance to ripen at the end of the year. I may try that.  I am going to make peach peel and pit  jelly with the remains from the peaches. I had this once and it is marvelous. And makes me feel better about throwing away all those juicy peels and peach pits!  Using them once  will make it easier to toss them into the compost/chicken coop. You just throw them into a big pan, cover with water and boil until it turns a light red color. Pectin, sugar and lemon and VOILA!  A beautiful and tasty jelly. I NEVER make jelly, because it's too much work...all that cooking and straining and yuck! I do make jams, mostly peach and strawberry and blackberry.  And apple butter every year. Once, years ago,  I scoured all the thrift shops, collected those little glasses that pimento spread comes in (clear glass, half pint (or less) with a cut star on the glass) and made assorted fruit juice jellies and put together Christmas baskets for all my friends that had a small tub of honey butter, jellies, and a loaf of bread.. I lined the baskets with festive Christmas dish towels, put a ribbon on the handle, and sent them off. Everyone loved them.  I always forget how many people do not get homemade things...

  I'm exhausted.  Yesterday I was shot and didn't do a thing. Today I will pay for that, lol.  I'd better get busy...those peaches aren't going to peel themselves.  They are gorgeous too...I may can some of them...I love the look of a canned peach, but I like the taste of them frozen. Freezing is much easier too.

  The Irishman is going on a camping outing this weekend. I'm not going...it will be nice to have the house to myself. This is a local AA campout that happens every year and we always go for part of it and he always  camps. My busted up body doesn't allow me to do that anymore...and it's little cabins with horrid beds. I don't mind not going ...and will often go up for the Saturday evening bonfire and speaker. may not even do that this year.  We'll see...

  Okay.  Enough with the lollygagging!

  I'm off to commune with the peaches...

Namaste.