Cherries and raspberries and basil and canning, oh my!

The week in review, in no particular order.  Just, well, because my mind is a bit spazzy like that.

On Sunday, the 6yo and I went off food hunting. 

I’d been hoping for my wonderful strawberry picking helper, but I didn’t luck out with that today.  He did *so* well last time we went, too.  So it was a fairly pitiful showing with almost 5.5lbs of strawberries.  But to redeem the day, we got 4.32 pounds of tayberries (what, you’ve never heard of them? fabulous cross between a raspberry and blackberry, so yummy!), and then 8 pounds of Vans cherries.  If you haven’t had really, truly, fresh cherries?  You’re missing out.  My hubby’s favorites are the Vans variety, I’m so-so on them because they can be fairly tart (my fav is Lamberts – they are so, so, so sweet, and then Royal Anne dehydrates beautifully!).  So the whole day and the drive wasn’t a total bust, and I met a new-to-me character at the place we bought the cherries.  I always love meeting a new farmer with, ahem, personality.  Even if I had to tell him to tone it down because of the little ears with me.  Anyway.  We’ve all been snacking on the cherries tonight.  I must be doing an okay job with the kids if they see these flats of fruit on the table and just start shoving their hands into grab things to munch on.  Or like the day before when they decided they were hungry and started thieving raspberries as I was picking them in the yard…

I ordered some ThirtyOne bags through a friend.  This one, for now, will be my canning bag experiment.

You ever get partway through canning prep and realize you forgot something?  Nope, just me?  Okay then.  Well I do.  I need more lids, another box of pectin, more lids, whatever.

Voila.  All shoved into one little bag I can snag from the pantry.

Because in the middle of canning… it gets a bit busy.

I made a double batch of just strawberries and pectin, and another double batch of strawberries with [blackberry] honey and pectin.  Yum.  This time, for whatever reason, the Pomona Pectin totally cooperated with me!  It was kind of unpredictable for me the last time I tried it (about two years ago).  On a side note, the Pomona Pectin I bought 2-3 years ago?  Was $3.69.  Know how much it is now?  $4.49.  Nope, no inflation here in our country, not at all. 

On a hot day last week, we went to a cute little town park with a creek.  I’m thrilled to say that the playground maybe 50-70 feet away from us/the creek?  Was deserted.  But there were at least 4-5 dozen people, minimum, playing in/on/around the creek.  Aka, nature for the win.

The 8yo got himself wet on accident by slipping on a rock or something into the creek.  After I’d told them not to get their clothes wet (they were all wearing shorts and sandals, with good reason!).  Sigh.  So he looked at me all concerned, and I told him “whatever, go ahead and get *really* wet now, might as well go whole hog.”  He had a very damp ride home though.

Dinner from the other night.  Zucchini from a nearish u-pick farm, topped with smoked gouda.  Then we had grilled sockeye salmon for the kids and copper river salmon for me and hubby.

Then hubby got the wheat grinder working again!!!
We finally tried starting it up a week and a half ago when Maga (Grandma) was up, and then we had the smell of burning plastic.  That’s not right.  It was an old on/off switch that had met it’s demise.  The wheat grinder’s almost as old as I am, so it makes sense that a part here or there would wear out.  Took hubby hunting around several hardware stores (Ace was the winner!), for a $7 part.  That kinda runs a several hundred dollar grinder.  Go figure.  So he got it installed, and fresh flour commenced.

You don’t even want to know how many hours of my childhood was spent sitting there in front of the grinder, spooning away the flour when it makes the little mountain range of flour under the grinding plates.  I have to say, it’s *still* just as mesmerizing now as an adult as it was back then.  It’s the little things. 

Ah, it’s that time of year again.  Horrible picture, I apologize.  But I love getting this catalog every year.  It’s like Christmas, in your mailbox, in July.  So. many. fun. things. in here.  Takes weeks to peruse the whole thing, especially when you circle, highlight, check off, post-it, and dog-ear pages and items inside.   Then it takes longer to whittle your list down to where the budget needs it to be.

Unexpected haul from the yard the other day.  Didn’t expect the raspberries to be ripe so soon, but hey.  I’ll take it.  Promptly rinsed them, and threw into the freezer to deal with another day.  Rinsed and sorted the basil and parsley and tossed in the dehydrator to get them taken care of.  I’ve got more basil plants, and I’m actually starting to get close to running out of home dehydrated basil, actually.

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