Applesauce

The other day, L and I raided the damaged produce cart at the grocery store. We came home with four packs of tomatoes, one pack of red peppers, and one pack of apples. All of the tomatoes and one single pepper have been turned into meat sauce (which was then turned into lasagne last night OM NOM NOM), and just the apples taunted me. I knew that I wanted to make applesauce, especially as I'd opened my last jar a few weeks ago. The fact that the sauce inside was runny and too sweet was mildly disappointing.

So today, I chopped up all of the apples, added a bit of water and the runny applesauce and set it to cook down. It cooked down about 5 hours or so, and then I deemed it worthy. :-P (As the previous applesauce was too sweet, I didn't add any additional sugar or spices.)

Keeping in mind my failure recently, and remembering that I STILL am without my jar lifters (grr), I was a little more cautious this time around. Heeding Francesca, I popped the jars into the oven to warm, instead of submerging them in hot water. I then took great care in using my silicone gripper and a wide spatula when lowering the jars into the water.

According to my Ball Blue Book of Canning, applesauce should be waterbath canned for 20 mins. They've been in there for at least 10 minutes (I'm timing for when the LAST jar went in, because you can't overprocess them by a few minutes) and when they are done, I will remove the WATER with a measuring cup (I did this last time to great effect) and thus, minimize any attempts to burn myself.

When this is all complete, I will have 7 jelly jars (8oz) of applesauce for the minimal price of $1.

UPDATE: Success! 7 jars and no burns! :-D

Projects

I have been fairly lax in the "doing stuff" department, so I've signed myself up for quite a few things to get me back in the swing of things.

1 -- I have to make an outfit for my mother by Easter (skirt, jacket, and maybe a poofy underskirt)

2 -- I have to FINISH Sharon's tablecloth and get it mailed to her

3 -- I have to finish the baby blanket that I've started for my mom's boyfriend's son's wife ('s fetus -- couldn't help myself!). To make it short, I'm calling her my step-sister. Either finish it, or decide to rip it out and begin anew. I suck at deciding how wide I should start so usually end up with double-wides that I turn sideways.

4 -- I have volunteered my needles to Sharon to make a few 8x8 squares for afghans and perhaps to make additional actual blankets. They aren't hard, all they take are time. I'll probably crochet over knit since knitting takes friggin' forever.

I'll put pics up in due course (I'm currently posting from work (*shock!)).

Holiday Cookies

So one of the items on my list of things to do is crossed off.



These cookies have been made and bundled up for my coworkers at LUSH. The alterations that I made for this batch (which was delicious btw):

-- Valrhona cocoa in lieu of black cocoa
-- no instant coffee
-- since I couldn't grind the cloves in my mortar/pestle, I used mace instead
-- almonds instead of walnuts
-- a bit of agave nectar and maple syrup instead of brown rice syrup
-- an extra 1/3 c. of molasses instead of brown sugar
-- applesauce instead of apple butter

Also, here's a list of useful substitutions for syrups.

Slightly Productive

So I wound up having a discussion with Mister yesterday about how to make a day not feel like a waste. Inevitably, I feel like Sundays are wasted, every week. We wake up late (circa 11, or 12), lounge around, get around to getting food at 2, and then I have to be at work by 4:30. Do you notice how little actual day there is?

When stating how I'm so sick of feeling like it was a wasted day, Mister started talking about the importance of having a day of rest. I was like, "but I don't want Sunday to be a day of rest!" After a little more non-committal "day of rest" talk, Mister mentions that perhaps HE wants Sundays to be a day of rest for HIM, as he works during the week.

Oh. Well, now why didn't you say that in the first place?

So we're going to work out some plans to give me stuff to do during the week. Yay!

----

In regards specifically to Sunday's productivity, I did get one important thing done: I gave three boxes of clothes to Goodwill. That required going through ALL of my clothes (I probably have the equivalent of 5 boxes of clothes left), sorting, boxing, and carting away. In addition to this great achievement, I got rid of a book.

Got rid of a book? Blasphemy you say. Let's just say that it needed to be done. One person reading this will understand that statement -- but I can't be any clearer on the internet.

Anyways... here's hoping that my productivity kicks up.

Today's Progress

First off, lemme say that it's difficult to be productive when there's a fuzzy kitten at your feet needing lovin's. :-P

Independence Days Update:

1. Plant something: got started on seeds. I planted the cayenne pepper, and the heirloom tomato mix. I'll probably get more done tomorrow after scavenging everyone's recycle bins tonight. :-D

On a nice note, as I'm a cheapskate, I just used dirt from the front yard -- and it's full of worms! Even with being careful, there were so many that I accidentally brought two inside with my dirt! So I apologized, and brought said wormies back outside. ... while singing Doctor Worm of course!

2. Harvest something: nothing yet!

3. Preserve something: putting banana bread in the freezer for later.

4. Waste Not: had 10 bananas that were solid black -- made two batches of banana bread (most in the form of muffins... where are all of my loaf pans?!) Also, turned down the hot water heater -- since the new one was put in, our heating bill has skyrocketed! This should "cool things down" a bit :-D.

5. Want Not: will go scavenging recycle bins for more things with which to plant in. (Egg cartons, plastic tubs, etc.)

6. Build Community Food Systems: nothing yet!

7. Eat the Food: BANANA BREAD NOM NOM

And I have already done three loads of laundry, and will continue to deplete my laundry pile throughout the evening. I've got delicates, sweaters (possibly TWO loads), towels/sheets, and probably another load of stuff that I can't remember.

This is probably my first day off of work that I've completed so damn much -- and still woke up at 1 pm!