* * * I don’t think I ever mentioned this, but the lady who bought the house next door moved in – she started moving in while I was in Maine, I think, and completely moved in a few days after I got back. She has, in the past few weeks, been a GREAT neighbor. Waves and calls hello, but not all up in my shit. (Probably my shit is not quite as fascinating to others as I might like to think, ya think?) A couple of weeks ago when I was mowing the lawn to surprise Fred*, she came over and asked if she could use the phone, because she’d locked herself out of her house. We went inside so I could look up the number of a locksmith for her, she called them, and then we talked for a few minutes before she went back over to her house to wait for the locksmith, and I went to finish mowing the lawn. She’s quiet, she keeps her lawn mowed and her deck is lovely to look at, and all in all I don’t believe I could have asked for a better neighbor. The only problem – and it’s certainly not her fault – is that my kitchen window looks directly into her back yard, and she spends a lot of time on her deck. Now, I didn’t think I spent all that much time in the kitchen, but since she’s moved in, it feels like I’m CONSTANTLY in there, either canning something or washing something, and of course if I’m at the sink I look out the window, and I know that several times she’s seen me standing in the window looking at her, and probably she thinks I’ve got nothing better to do than stand and watch her (I like what she’s done with the deck, by the way. Lots of plants and a pretty baker’s rack). What I need to do is plant something bushy and fast-growing that will grow enough so that it will block my view of her back yard, but not so much that it’ll block the morning sun. I’m in Zone 8, people – I’d like something that stays green and bushy year-round (I thought of butterfly bushes, but they lose their leaves in the winter and are supposed to be cut back). Suggestions? (Don’t forget – fast-growing is what I’m looking for, not something that’ll take 10 years to get big enough to do the job.) *I don’t know what you do to surprise your husband – lingerie, or a gift from the local “adult” store, perhaps – but I know the direct way to Fred’s heart, and mowing the lawn so he was free to come home and work on his shed instead of having to mow the lawn made him one happy man.
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With the cooler weather, the jalapenos, habaneros and bell peppers have really taken off, and they’ve been piling up in the refrigerator, so I finally decided to do something about it. First I made a batch of habanero hot sauce (no pictures), and when the hot sauce was all mixed up, Fred took a little dab of it and put it on his tongue, and reported that his tongue burned for five minutes afterward. He doesn’t know that he’s going to use an entire batch of the stuff in this lifetime, but it’s good to have around in case he wants to add heat to something, I suppose. Then I took care of the jalapenos:
I ended up with two jars of whole pickled jalapenos, three jars of sliced pickled jalapenos, and since I had room in the canner, I did a jar of whole habaneros (when he saw the jar of habaneros, Fred just looked at me like he thought perhaps I’d lost my mind).
I use this recipe for the pickled jalapeno peppers, but I don’t use the pickling spice (Fred doesn’t like the peppercorns) or the bay leaves. And I used this recipe for the Habanero Hot Sauce (scroll down). Oddly, that recipe is the exact same as this one, but the one I didn’t use calls for 1 1/2 cups of white vinegar. That might explain why my hot sauce ended up being so thick. I think I need to go add white vinegar to the stuff I made, and see if that works a little better.
Once those were done and cooling, I did what I’d been meaning to do for quite some time: I made and canned spaghetti sauce.
My recipe: Approximately 12 cups of tomato sauce (made and frozen at a previous date by moi); a small can of tomato paste; a package (8 ounces, I think) of mushrooms, chopped coarsely; 1 medium onion, chopped coarsely; a couple of cloves of minced garlic; a generous sprinkling of Italian Seasoning, and plenty of salt (I thought I’d added too much, but a taste test told me that I absolutely didn’t). Mix together, bring to a boil, turn it down to a simmer and let it simmer for about an hour, or until it’s reached the thickness you desire.
I ended up with three quart jars of spaghetti sauce, and I tell you what – this stuff was GOOD. I processed it for 25 minutes in a steam pressure canner (at ten pounds) and let the jars sit overnight. One of the jars didn’t seal, so rather than re-process it, we had it last night with leftover meatballs, over angel hair pasta. I thought it was really good, but Fred especially sang the praises of the spaghetti sauce.
One caveat: I didn’t know until after I’d canned the spaghetti sauce that onions and garlic aren’t particularly recommended in canned spaghetti sauce, because they can turn bitter. Had I realized that, I would have frozen the spaghetti sauce instead. The sauce we had last night wasn’t bitter at all, but I don’t know if it’s the canning process that’s supposed to turn them bitter, or sitting in the jar for a long period of time.
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“Hey! Take a picture of me! A picture of me and Da Boog! Like this! Take a picture of me and Da Boog!”
“You might have mentioned that I looked like an idiot before you snapped the picture. Is my head really that big?”
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Fred took this picture a few weeks ago, and since he hasn’t used it yet, I’m claiming it for my own journal.
I honestly didn’t expect this to come out so well – I snapped it through the window (that white string hanging down goes to the blinds).
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