Well there have been many times that I planned to sit down and blog, but either the pictures weren't off of the camera yet or that time got eaten up by other things. So here are the escapades of Cindy and Carrie over the last few months.
In late September we harvested our first big crop of tomatoes and ended up stewing and canning most of them and tried our hand at
some spaghetti sauce. It was pretty thin and maybe a bit heavy on the spices, but it was definitely too bland. After much researching I found out most spaghetti sauces contain sugar to make them taste better...who knew? Then I found a website that promoted a packet that contained all the spices you needed, a bit of a thickener and had you add sugar to the processed tomatoes to make sauce for canning. Yea!!! So we were ready for our next crop to come off the plants. Well by that time the weather was flirting with lows that were closing in on freezing 
and that wasn't going to do anything good to our vegetables. So in mid-October we harvested everything...in one day. We picked every tomato off the plants, green or red cause they will ripen just fine in the house, all the carrots, potatoes, peppers, squash, pumpkins and melons that were still out there. I even cut the heads off the giant sunflowers we had planted to dry for roasting seeds. The wheelbarrow was brimming! We had about six bags of tomatoes to process, though since most of the tomatoes were still green it has been slow waiting for them to ripen. We froze the carrots, have been eating slowly on the potatoes, put three of the 
pumpkins that grew out on the porch, took two sugar pumpkins in the house to ripen for making pies, hung the sunflower heads to dry in the shed, and ditched most of the squash and melons. They were just too slow growing, or nutrient deprived, and ended up small and mostly inedible. Thanks to Pam at work though, we have been eating plenty of really yummy acorn squash that grew in her garden too vigorously. Once we had another good supply of ripe tomatoes we took 'em to the press...as in tomato press. I had purchased one earlier in the summer thinking of homemade sauce and it definitely got a workout. We pressed enough tomatoes to fill a huge stockpot plus more and made and canned some pretty delicious looking sauce. Once again the counter is filling up though and we will probably be stewing these guys again.
some spaghetti sauce. It was pretty thin and maybe a bit heavy on the spices, but it was definitely too bland. After much researching I found out most spaghetti sauces contain sugar to make them taste better...who knew? Then I found a website that promoted a packet that contained all the spices you needed, a bit of a thickener and had you add sugar to the processed tomatoes to make sauce for canning. Yea!!! So we were ready for our next crop to come off the plants. Well by that time the weather was flirting with lows that were closing in on freezing 
and that wasn't going to do anything good to our vegetables. So in mid-October we harvested everything...in one day. We picked every tomato off the plants, green or red cause they will ripen just fine in the house, all the carrots, potatoes, peppers, squash, pumpkins and melons that were still out there. I even cut the heads off the giant sunflowers we had planted to dry for roasting seeds. The wheelbarrow was brimming! We had about six bags of tomatoes to process, though since most of the tomatoes were still green it has been slow waiting for them to ripen. We froze the carrots, have been eating slowly on the potatoes, put three of the 
pumpkins that grew out on the porch, took two sugar pumpkins in the house to ripen for making pies, hung the sunflower heads to dry in the shed, and ditched most of the squash and melons. They were just too slow growing, or nutrient deprived, and ended up small and mostly inedible. Thanks to Pam at work though, we have been eating plenty of really yummy acorn squash that grew in her garden too vigorously. Once we had another good supply of ripe tomatoes we took 'em to the press...as in tomato press. I had purchased one earlier in the summer thinking of homemade sauce and it definitely got a workout. We pressed enough tomatoes to fill a huge stockpot plus more and made and canned some pretty delicious looking sauce. Once again the counter is filling up though and we will probably be stewing these guys again.
Also in mid-October we cut all the herbs in the herb garden before the frost could touch them too. I love the way cut herbs look when they are hung for drying, especially when hung from eco-friendly and Martha Sewart-y branches nabbed out of the yard. We hang them in the pantry to dry and it makes it smell amazing in there.
Since we were in the preserving mood, Mom got the idea to get some apples for cheap at a You-Pick place out of the newspaper and make apple jelly and apple butter. We live in the heart of apple growing country so it wasn't hard to find an orchard selling off their less than perfect 
apples for cheap. We ended up getting two giant boxes full for $7.00 each! All this craziness started when Pam from work gave us some apples that they had picked 
at a You-Pick that was just too many for them. She figured they go to chickies as treats...we saw possibilities. First it was a couple of baked apples, then an apple crisp, then another, then an apple pie. Finally the apples were getting low and on the edge of usability so we sat one night and peeled, cored and sliced the rest and froze in aluminum pie and crisp pans enough for 4 more crisps and 6 more pies. While our boxes were 
sitting around waiting to be made into jelly and butter there was a dessert pot-luck at work and since we had the apples I decided to make an Autumn Apple Cheesecake out of our Philadelphia Cream Cheese cookbook. Omigosh....so good. So then Mom froze apples for 4 more cheesecakes, one of which will be appearing on our Thanksgiving menu.
apples for cheap. We ended up getting two giant boxes full for $7.00 each! All this craziness started when Pam from work gave us some apples that they had picked 
at a You-Pick that was just too many for them. She figured they go to chickies as treats...we saw possibilities. First it was a couple of baked apples, then an apple crisp, then another, then an apple pie. Finally the apples were getting low and on the edge of usability so we sat one night and peeled, cored and sliced the rest and froze in aluminum pie and crisp pans enough for 4 more crisps and 6 more pies. While our boxes were 
sitting around waiting to be made into jelly and butter there was a dessert pot-luck at work and since we had the apples I decided to make an Autumn Apple Cheesecake out of our Philadelphia Cream Cheese cookbook. Omigosh....so good. So then Mom froze apples for 4 more cheesecakes, one of which will be appearing on our Thanksgiving menu.Think we're crazy yet? Read on.
Meanwhile we had been on the hunt for the perfect storage solution for our c
raft room. You see we have an enormous amount of craft projects and items with which to weave, knit, crochet, sew, paint, etc. I wanted a better storage unit for the copious amounts of yarn we have to weave, knit and crochet with, especially since the current solution was to put them in bags, boxes, Sterilite bins and shove them haphazardly in the room. Since we can't see any of the yarn, we just keep buying what we need rather than using what we have. I really wanted something that looked like the storage at yarn shops that makes the yarn look attractive and makes you want to knit it. We tried a few things that we had but ended up finding out they wouldn't work for everything that we wanted to
store or would take time and energy we didn't have to fix up. We finally ended up going to The Pine Shop in town with a drawing of mine and they came back with a dollar amount we could afford. The units would be unfinished, but ready for us to put a couple coats of varnish on, which was perfect. We didn't stain them and they are really pretty in their natural color. It took us a while to clean out the space for them to go into but once they were in nothing else would have been as beautiful. We got all the yarn we had stored, along with books, magazines and other knitting and weaving accouterments and found out we have enough room to still buy more ;). The room holds my mom's floor loom in the middle of it and with all that stored you can finally get all the way around it, which is a good thing cause she'd really like to be able to use it one of these days!
raft room. You see we have an enormous amount of craft projects and items with which to weave, knit, crochet, sew, paint, etc. I wanted a better storage unit for the copious amounts of yarn we have to weave, knit and crochet with, especially since the current solution was to put them in bags, boxes, Sterilite bins and shove them haphazardly in the room. Since we can't see any of the yarn, we just keep buying what we need rather than using what we have. I really wanted something that looked like the storage at yarn shops that makes the yarn look attractive and makes you want to knit it. We tried a few things that we had but ended up finding out they wouldn't work for everything that we wanted to
store or would take time and energy we didn't have to fix up. We finally ended up going to The Pine Shop in town with a drawing of mine and they came back with a dollar amount we could afford. The units would be unfinished, but ready for us to put a couple coats of varnish on, which was perfect. We didn't stain them and they are really pretty in their natural color. It took us a while to clean out the space for them to go into but once they were in nothing else would have been as beautiful. We got all the yarn we had stored, along with books, magazines and other knitting and weaving accouterments and found out we have enough room to still buy more ;). The room holds my mom's floor loom in the middle of it and with all that stored you can finally get all the way around it, which is a good thing cause she'd really like to be able to use it one of these days!So hear we are in the middle of November. We put up some Christmas lights today because the dark has gotten so long already. Mom needs lights to go out and feed chickies in the evenings cause if we get out a half-hour or hour late from work it's already getting dark. We are also sick of looking out the windows into blackness, so our fence lights and the kids cabin icicle lights and snowflakes went up along with the deer. I hear it's not too long before we see real snowflakes falling outside...if you can see.
