Trick or Treat and Happy Halloween

Trick or Treat.

Smell my feet.

Do you have anything good to eat?

Odd that I would mention the feet part. I spent a couple of hours cleaning this afternoon, and I was pretty sure the smell I was trying to eradicate was dirty feet. On the other hand it might have been pheasant guts. I was almost ready to head to the basement to see if the last set of hunters left one of their friends behind down there. Yikes must be the Halloween spirit that has me thinking this way.

I should have done the cleaning this morning, but I started a batch of bread when I was eating breakfast, and that pretty well kept me tied to the house until noon. I was going to make lasagna for supper, but opted for spaghetti instead. At any rate, I made some bread sticks to go along with it. As long as I had the oven hot, I took the botched bread from last Friday, and cubed it to make up some croutons. I didn’t follow any special recipe just coated them with some oil and sprinkled some garlic salt on them and shook them all up in a bowl then put them on a pan and baked them a few minutes. James thinks they are edible so I guess it works for me.

Home made tomato soup with croutons. Yummy!!

Before I add the pictures to show you what I was talking about above, I will let you know a couple of up coming items. I am not sure how much I will be writing in November. I will try to get on the blog and site read your posts, and hit “like” for those I enjoy, just not sure how much writing I will do. I also have two sermons coming up on Nov. 10 and Nov. 17. Those are the two big, “check her out” days. There is one other person preaching the week after me and then the church will meet to decide what they want to do. Yikes.

The other major thing is that I joined up for the write a novel in November thing. It was posted in the area where you find the writing and photo challenges. Sadly, I don’t expect myself to finish, but maybe if I have that attitude, I will try to prove myself wrong. I am kind of weird like that. Don’t ever tell me that I CAN’T do something. The other thing that might happen is that writing could breed more writing. Sometimes I have to hold myself back from writing three or four blog posts in the same day. I guess it will be what it will be. In the meantime, I hope all of you had a great Halloween and tomorrow have a great All Saints Day.

Firing up the bread machine.

I love using glass jars for storing my staples for cooking and baking.

Bread sticks for supper.

Doughy bread used to make croutons. I finally realized I should pour the oil on both sides before I cubed it.

Ready for the oven.

Happy to be here

I will just start with my title, I am so happy to be here today. Last night when I was checking on comments and reading all of your lovely posts, the lap top went black. I thought the battery was dead and ran for the cord. I plugged it in, but nothing happened. I took out the battery, plugged it back in and tried again. Still nothing. I went to a different outlet. Still nothing. I packed it up and told James to take it to the computer doctor. A couple of hours later I decided to try the plug in one more time. It still didn’t work. This morning James took it along to school, but before he could take it any where for help, he plugged it in. It worked fine. I pretty much give up.

So, that means I spent the day without the lap top that I normally use. I tried hooking up the old iMac. I finally got the internet to work, but the WordPress program would not open. I ended up revisiting an old computer game, Snood, but even that was slow. I gave up and went back to the kitchen and let the tomatoes and such dictate my life. I didn’t even budge when my sister, Kathy, tried to con me into cleaning her motel for her. The best I could do was call our aunt and nag her. I ended up paying her off with fresh coffee, home-made bread and plum jelly. I also gave her an onion and forced her to take tomatoes. I nearly had to pull a gun to get her to take some, ok, so I don’t have a gun in my house, but it sounded better. Don’t tell me some of you don’t embellish on the blog a time or two.

So, now that I have hit enough words to write a small college term paper, I will show you the rest of my day in photos and short captions. I will do my best to keep it brief. Basically I am pretty tired and can’t wait to get organized for tomorrow then hit the hay, so here goes my day in photos.

I have been meaning to do cucumber relish for quite some time. Today was the day.

Recipe from Ball Blue Book.

To get started, I had to do all sorts of chopping. This isn’t so bad since I love using this chop wizard. I only show it below with the cucumber, but it looks pretty much the same with the peppers and onions and such. It went faster than I thought, but still took time.

Chopping cucumbers.

Relish in the pot.

The results.

In the meantime, I was sorting, washing and blanching tomatoes. Yes, I am still working on that plethora of tomatoes. I guess this will teach me to plants 36 tomato plants. Last year I had 50, but they didn’t produce nearly as well. The year before we were hailed out and then they froze. I think I lost quite a few to frost last year too. I think maybe 25 plants will be enough next year, maybe. Anyway here is the tomato story for the day.

Blanched

Salsa

Soup

The results of the salsa and relish.

The tomatoes are dwindling. Hurrah!!

Here are the actual results: Relish-4 pints and 7 half-pints; Salsa-2 quarts and 12 pints; Soup-5 quarts and 2 pints. Thanks to Victoria I had enough jars to complete the work today. She will be getting much of what I did today, along with several bags of undone tomatoes so she can do some of her own canning next week. Also, thanks to Michelle for the tip about putting the flour to thicken the soup into some cold juice before heating it all up. I did that in stages with 2 quarts, and it worked quite well. I also realize that when using your blender it is better to use the whip setting instead of the liquefy.

Dang, the picture that I forgot to take was the one of two canner kettles on the stove at the same time. I had to move the pot of salsa to a hot pad for 15 minutes so that I could get the relish and a few salsa jars a 10 minute bath in the canner kettles. It is easier to lift a canner kettle of half pints or pints, but it sure makes the day go longer when you don’t use all quarts.

So, this is all I have for now. “Parting is such sweet sorrow so adieu until the morrow.” Perhaps that is not quite a quote, but it sounded good to me. Tomorrow I will be substituting for a music teacher. I am taking along the new beanie that I am working on so I can knit while waiting for James and Kathy to be ready to leave. Catch you later. Have a good one.

Canning and baking with ADD….

I seriously think that I should have been diagnosed with ADD, but I was born before they knew what that was, and being diagnosed wouldn’t have done me any good anyway. I seriously remember not being able to sit still in school, but I got over it. What I have never gotten over is starting little projects and never finishing them. Now when it is a super huge project, like organizing some great event, piece of cake. So perhaps we should be giving some of our fidgety children more instead of less. Yes, I agree that some can’t handle it, but perhaps there are two types of this disorder, and we need to pay attention to which one we have.

Now that I have my introduction or background paragraph out of the way, I can tell you what this is really about. I needed to do up some tomatoes today. I also needed to use up a bag of rhubarb that I thawed a few days ago. Top it all off with there were only two pieces of bread left. After sitting around most of yesterday feeling sorry for myself because my throat hurt after the Saturday event in the rain, I decided to get to work. Ok, clarify the event was fine, but it started raining right afterwards, so the reception was under a gazebo while it rained.

James and some of his brothers and families at the anniversary.

James’ sister Louise and husband Buck renewing vows with children as clergy for their 40th wedding anniversary.

More Haak family members at the anniversary.

The short version of what I did today was:

1. Baked two loaves of bread. Thankfully the bread machine is back in action. I thought that I had burned it out the last time I used it. Lesson learned to do a better job of cleaning it.

2. Baked a rhubarb bundt cake. It was a rhubarb nut coffee cake recipe. Of course I can never follow a recipe exactly, besides I didn’t have nuts. I put in coconut. I can’t wait until James gets home so we can eat some.

Rhubarb Bundt cake

3. Canned 9 quarts of tomato soup. I was going to do 7 soup and 7 spaghetti sauce, but I couldn’t tell how many tomatoes I would need, so I just took the ones that were obviously red. I still have two tables and the counter in the laundry room full. I moved a few out, but there still isn’t enough room for what is in the pails, and we should go pick some more. I have 16 quart jars left. I am thinking that I really need Jessica to bring those 10 jars to Paulina, and I might even have some filled ones waiting for her there.

Here is the recipe that I got from Vera via her daughter Connie.
2 gallows cut up tomatoes, 1 whole bunch of celery chopped, 1 green pepper, 6 medium onions, Cook all of this until soft then run through a sieve. Pictures below. To cold tomato juice add 1 1/2 cups sugar, 1 1/2 cups flour, 1/4 cups canning salt. Heat tomato mixture until boiling, slowly add flour mixture so it doesn’t clump. Add 1/2 cup oleo or margarine should be a gravy consistency. Process in pints at 5 pounds for 10 minutes. When cooking to eat add 1 cup of milk and a pinch of soda so it doesn’t curdle.

Here is the Grandma Lucinda’s version of the recipe.

Blanch tomatoes. I do what I have, but try to keep it around 7 quarts so it is just the amount to process. As I peel them I put them in the blender then run the blended hot tomatoes through a canning sieve, filling a large steel pot as I go. Last year I began spraying the pot when cold to avoid any sticking. My family does not like the flavor of the onions, peppers and celery, so I do leave those out. I add 1/4 cup of canning salt and 1/2 to 1 cup of sugar depends on the tomatoes, so you have to keep tasting to see what you like. I also add 1 stick of butter. Another trick I have figured with the addition of flour, I take some liquid out and mix it with the flour in my blender. This helps to prevent clumps. Add at least one cup of flour, but not more than two. Again check the flavor to your liking. I suspect the Blue Book would prefer if there were two table spoons of lemon juice per quart jar. I have never done that, but may try it. I process in a canner for 15-20 minuets. Today I had 2 jars too many. They did seal without processing, but I will probably use them right away or store them in the refrigerator.

Ball Blue Book canning

Here is what we mean by a sieve.

Full view of sieve. I always thought it was only for chokecherries, but found it works great with everything.

As you can see from the picture below, I should have made salsa, but I had so many of the Big Boy tomatoes that I had to do soup as I believe they make the best soup.

Peppers are coming in well right now.