One thing I do, when I’m sitting down to write an entry, is open a recent entry and copy and paste the code for the divider line – oh, it LOOKS all simple, but if I don’t put line breaks in there, things get too close to each other and I get all annoyed – from an already-posted entry to the entry I’m working on.
I opened Friday’s entry to copy the divider line code, and I glanced at the part where I’d posted the recipe, and for a moment I thought it said “Sweet Pickled Jesus.”
I cannot wait to use that line in a conversation. “Sweet pickled Jesus is it hot out there!”
I had what felt like a very busy weekend. Friday I blanched ears of corn that Fred had picked Thursday evening. I got them blanched and cooled, then wrapped each ear in plastic, put them all in a larger freezer bag, and put them in the freezer. That took longer than you’d expect, between the blanching, the cooling, and the waiting for the ears to drain, and I used up every bit of ice we had in the house.
(There may have been an afternoon nap that I just couldn’t seem to wake up from, also.)
Saturday, Fred harvested the rest of the corn, and I spent the morning blanching, cooling, and draining the ears. We left the house around 10:00 to do errands (Dollar Store, dropping off mail, buying feed at the Co-Op, browsing at Lowe’s, stopping by Publix to pick up lunch), and when we got home, I started cutting the kernels of corn off the ears. Now, I’ve always just frozen whole ears of corn, because it’s easier and they taste just fine. But we ended up with something like 150 ears of corn, and though we have a lot of freezer space, I didn’t want to take up all that freezer space with corn.
I had read, at some point over the winter, the idea of using a mandoline to cut the kernels off your ears of corn. I have this one, and it’s come in super handy this summer, I’ve used it a lot to slice squash for dehydrating. So I gave it a try with the corn, and it worked out really well. I spent a couple of hours running the ears of corn over the mandoline, and then using a knife to scrape all the left-behind corn goop off each ear. It was a pain in the ass, but when I was done I had something like 15 packages of 1 1/2 cups of creamed corn, ready for the freezer. In addition, I’ve got three dozen ears of corn in the freezer for when we’re having a hankering for corn on the cob.
I love the hell out of corn. Fred will eat it if it’s there, but I LOVE it. Especially paired with mashed potatoes!
What else did I do on Saturday? Oh, I sliced up a cantaloupe to dehydrate (we’re about to get a ton of cantaloupe from the garden and are looking to preserve it so that Fred can eat it all. I’m no fan of cantaloupe, but he loves it.) and I also sliced and pitted cherries he’d gotten on sale last week. By the time I was done dealing with the cherries, my fingers were stained purple and two days later they’re still stained a bit.
I’d intended to vacuum on Saturday, but that just didn’t happen. Oh, don’t give me that look – I’d just vacuumed on Thursday!
(Side note: I miss the hell out of my Dyson. I probably didn’t tell y’all, but I finally took my poor broken Dyson to the repair shop, and the problem turned out to be… something (I don’t remember what) that would have been way too expensive to fix. I’m currently using a Kenmore canister vacuum (one that we’ve had for five years), and I have to tell you that it does a fine job, but I hate the fuck sweet pickled Jesus out of canister vacuums because you have to pull the damn thing around like a dog on a leash, and it’s always getting in the way and making me want to kick it. I am noting VERY CLOSELY that the Dysons currently have five year warranties, and even though Dyson haven’t lasted very long for me in the past and I know that non-bag vacuums are no good for a home with 73 cats, I MISS MY DYSON, because everything else is clunky and heavy and annoying to me.)
When I got up Sunday morning, I did all my boring usual morning stuff (one day I’m going to capture the magic of my mornings in excruciating detail WITH PICTURES and y’all will have to bookmark it for those nights when you cannot fall asleep) and then I went outside to work in the garden. I got a ton of Sungold cherry tomatoes (they’re coming in like gangbusters), and then I had to pull up several tomato plants that were all blighty or dying for some other reason. Then I picked the jalapenos (which are also coming in like crazy) and THEN I went into my raised bed garden and started pulling up carrots.
I think I’m going to just give up on carrots. I like them well enough, but the thing I find annoying about them is that each carrot plants gives you (drum roll) one carrot. Unlike a tomato plant which gives you on average 3,794 tomatoes, you only get one lonely carrot from each carrot plant, and these carrots took for-sweetpickledjesus-ever to grow (I did start them early enough, but then there was this tornado and I had to replant and even though the directions on the packet claimed that they’d be ready in 60 days, they ended up taking more like 90 days), and I was a dumbass and didn’t thin the carrots once they’d started growing, so I ended up with all these tiny carrots, and fuck you carrots. YOU ARE NOT ALL THAT.
Then I cut a bunch of catnip off the catnip plants (I hear that they’re hardy plants and will respond to being cut back by growing even more vigorously) and I brought everything inside and started dealing with it. At some point, some catnip fell onto the floor, and all the ‘nipheads in the house (Spanky, Miz Poo, Jake and Elwood, and Sugarbutt) came running and had themselves a bit of a ‘nipfest. I bundled up the catnip I’d brought inside, and hung it in the hall closet to dry.
Probably the Brown Recluses will have a field day with it. I’m imagining them rolling them into ‘nip doobies and toking up.
I vacuumed, did Fred’s laundry, let the Spice Girls and Ciara out of the foster room, and took a shower. Then I sliced about three billion cherry tomatoes in half and put them in the dehydrator.
It’s my goal to get a gallon jar full of dehydrated cherry tomatoes before the tomatoes stop growing. I’m about 1/3 of the way there!
Then I started slicing jalapenos and made another triple batch of sweet pickled Jesus jalapenos. While I was waiting for the liquid to boil, I seared a pork roast and then put it in the crock pot.
Dinner last night was pork roast, boiled carrots, and tomato mozzarella melts. All grown at Crooked Acres (well, except for the spices on the roast and the mozzarella on the tomatoes!) and it was really really good.
And that was my weekend. How was yours?
When I first got the Spice Girls, Cori was a bitey little thing. She’d bite and bite with her sharp little teeth, and OH was it annoying (and painful). But she has turned into the biggest lovebug in the last couple of weeks. All she wants to do is sit on your lap and be petted, and she never bites any more. She’s a lovah, not a biter.
::thlurrrp!::
Clove and Ciara, playing with one of the many packing straps floating around the house.
Cilantro, biting the ham-mick.
Cilantro and Cori, fighting. (Also, we have too many shoes in this house.)
She’s ALWAYS giving me this look. Fred says she looks smug. I think she looks like she wants to cut me.
Sweet Miss Clove.
All fosters in this house eventually love to hang out by the back door.
No longer a tiny thing, Alice is on her way to being portly. One good thing, though – remember when we first got her, and she was always making that wheezing sound? And then we took her to the special vet so they could knock her out and stick a tube down her throat to see what was what? And they found nothing but a little scar tissue? Well, she’s not making that wheezing sound any more at all! Fred thinks it might come back in the Fall. We’ll see. At least she’s not sounding like she’s at death’s door any more!
Previously
2010: No entry.
2009: No entry.
2008: (This site does not condone stealing.)
2007: Did the Zodiac Killer curse them with doughy bodies, was that the unspoken conspiracy?
2006: No entry.
2005: Debbie: “Oh, right. I used to boil Brian’s nipples when he was a baby.”
2004: Hawaii.
2003: No entry.
2002: Y’know, I have way too much fun making fun of that man.
2001: Excuse me, he’s known about this closing for well over a month and still can’t manage to be on time? How self-important can you be?
2000: Fucking every time I drive through Pennsylvania it fucking pours down rain.