My Tireless Retirement – Week 125

 

Hello!  The karate instructor where I work veggie bombed me with a very full grocery bag of pickling cucumbers.  It’s crazy, but the two things I was hoping to grow this summer, cucumbers and zucchini, were eaten down to the ground by grasshoppers and yet I’ve been gifted both of those things in the past month.  Lucky me!

 

I decided to turn most of those cucumbers into bread and butter pickles and was able to put up seven pints.  Fortunately I had everything I needed already on hand to make the pickles so I didn’t need to make any special trip to the store for ingredients.  After discovering how much my co-workers love bread and butter pickles I will be sharing four pints with them, two went on the shelf in my LTFS and one into my regular rotation.  In two weeks the pickles should be ready to eat.  I love that I was blessed and in turn I can bless others.  It makes my heart happy.

 

I ran out of canning jars, which surprised the heck out of me.  I thought I had plenty, but I’ve done a lot of canning this year.  I needed to go to Wal-Mart to pick up more, but I was dreading going.  They aren’t that close to my home so it’s a bit of a jaunt, I don’t particularly care for shopping at Wal-Mart and it was the final days leading up to going back to school so I knew it would be a zoo in there.  I decided to go ahead and just place an online order and had it delivered with FREE shipping since my order was over $35.  I had to wait an extra day, but I was fine with that and it worked out perfectly.  Now that I’m stocked back up I can proceed.

 

My tomatoes are coming in like gangbusters.  I had gathered up enough for my first round of canning from my garden and I made tomato sauce.  I wanted to can it in pints and half pints this year.  The half pint sizes will be perfect for making my tomato soup and pizza sauce or any other recipe that doesn’t use a full size can.  This time I tried a new vintage recipe from one of my WWII cookbooks and I’ll be sure to share that with you soon.  It looked really good and it tasted pretty good too.  I thought it would be a nice change from doing just plain old sauce.

 

After all of this canning I had been doing I took some of the fresh produce leftover in my crisper drawer and prepped it for future use and recipes.  I chopped up peppers, onions and celery, put it into bags, labeled them and placed them into the bin I keep my frozen vegetables in the freezer.  I love having my own pre-prepared vegetables at the ready for cooking and it is a good way to make sure nothing goes to waste while also saving money.  Once again veggies scraps went to the bunny, the chickens and into the bag I keep in the freezer for broth – everybody wins!

 

Just watching people on the rides was enough to make me queasy 😳

On Tuesday I treated myself to a trip to the Western Idaho Fair.  The last time I went to the fair was in 2022 right after I had first retired and it was so HOT that day.  This year it was much, much better weather wise.  It was $2 Tuesday meaning that they had reduced the fair admission as well as many of the rides and food items available so I was glad about that.  I still passed on the $8 corn dogs.

 

Once again I got to test my bus driver skills on Wednesday and took another group of seniors back out to the orchard to pick fruit – peaches, nectarines and the biggest blackberries I’ve ever seen.  Snacking was encouraged and it was a really good time, tasty too. 

 

Meals I Prepared: 

I finished up leftovers from the week before and then opened up a jar of pork verde to make tacos for a few meals last week.  I thawed some rotisserie chicken I had put away in the freezer and enjoyed that with a green salad one day.  A quick pasta supper was made using spaghetti noodles from the pantry as well as a home canned jar of sauce with Italian sausage in it.

 

I made a couple of brunches too – poached eggs on toast and oatmeal with sliced peaches.  It had been a very long time since I’d made oatmeal and boy did it ever taste good.  I also enjoyed a jar of home canned black bean soup that I had made last week along with lots of fresh fruits and vegetables.  All in all, pretty darn good meals.

 

Thursday morning I put another batch of tomatoes into my largest slow cooker to make enchilada sauce and something I’ve never made before – ketchup.  While the tomatoes were stewing away I made a batch of homemade yogurt.  You just can’t beat your own yogurt and topped with some fresh fruit or berries.  Yum!

 

Throughout the week I’ve been doing some more ancestry work as the tentacles of my family tree have really spread and grown.  I’ve always been fascinated with history, especially American history, and as things have progressed I’ve had some BIG surprises, but they’ve all been very pleasant surprises.  I’ve always known my family was a very strong military family, but I had no idea to the extent in which we were involved.  Let me know if you want to hear more about this because, if so, I’d love to start sharing.  I am just amazed!  I’ve long known I qualified as a Daughter of The American Revolution, but I had no idea just how much I qualified.  Can anyone say “founding fathers”?

 

I’ve decided to start a new “album” of sorts, by compiling historical information about certain family members.  I’m super excited to start this project, not only for myself, but also future generations.  It excites me to do the research and find out all the little bits of information I am able to glean.  I’m actually contemplating doing some travel to visit the places that are relevant to my research.  A trip to Virginia and Washington DC just may be in my future.  Not in November though, that could be dicey.

 

That pretty much summed up my week.  How was yours?