Canning the excess

Song of the day: “I just wanna make love to you” by Etta James. Again.

It’s been a friggin’ busy day, and I think I’m running on fumes.
Why, I hear you ask? It was CANNING DAY. Seriously, nothing too serious, but it is time consuming and somewhat exhausting. Hah.

It started yesterday, really, with boiling bottles and such for today’s use.
At the same time I cut about 12 pounds of Gherkins. All got sliced and after putting them into a bucket (filled up to three quarters) I filled it up with water and salt so it could pickle for 24 hours or so. So yeah, this my first time ‘round with pickles, so basically today was spent experimenting with it. Bad thing is, we won’t know if it worked out until three weeks from now. Hah.

First there was some serious organizing to do, and one of the things that really had to be done, besides getting another table down so I’d have a surface to work on, was shoveling away sand. It’s been lying about ever since we started building the wall, and the dogs spread it out all over the place. It took me about fifteen minutes to get a semblance of a path going, but then it was time to get to it.

Yesterday was actually a pretty nice day, all things considered. Sure, it was warm and all, but it was rather wonderful to work in the yard after cleaning all those pots and cutting the Gherkins. Harvested tomatoes for today, put in new lettuces, even though it is doubtful that it will do much good. In summer lettuce (iceberg slaw in particular) does badly here. They’ll grow and then before they start forming a head they will shoot through into bloom, which kinda defeats the point of getting lettuce, doesn’t it. Ah well, gotta try anyway.

Not a lot of writing yesterday, but three pages nonetheless. The story is getting there, I have to say. I only have another 15.000 words to go, and still have several scenes to add, darn it. Why is it that I always have trouble with the limited word count? Seriously, I overshoot by 10.000 words if I’m not careful. Heck, I’d probably overshoot by 20K. It’s so much easier to do longer stories than it is to compound it into something shorter.

But okay, I’ll figure it out. Worst comes to worst, I’ll have to cut out words, or cut a scene (screams in horror). I know. How can I ever possibly do that? You don’t cut scenes...at least, I don’t. Hah. Ah, writing. Ya gotta love it.

I was late getting to bed, darn it, and so friggin’ tired I started nodding off half an hour before I finally got to my bed. Seriously, I’m really making it too late these past few weeks. I can hardly get out of bed in the mornings.

Which was a problem again this morning, seeing as I didn’t hear my alarm. I’m going to have to pick a different sound, because I just don’t hear it anymore. It made me half an hour late, meaning that I had to rush through the morning rituals which I positively hate to do. No matter, though, laundry had to be done, breakfast had to be made, and with the dogs howling around me, I headed up to tenant’s place to start on the day’s tasks.

Time for chickpea patties for dinner, btw, they worked out splendidly again, and I’m definitely adding them to my recipe book...same goes for the lentil patties for that matter, and maybe even the mix that has soy beans in them as well. Ah well, we’ll see.

That done, tenant and I walked down to the basin terrace where, by using the outside kitchen, we were going to do the canning in the great outdoors, rather than inside the dark stuffy kitchen. Yay. It was wonderful out. A bright sun, yes, but also a cool eastern wind that took the coolness of the see to us.

The majority of the morning was spent cutting herbs, peppers, onions and tomatoes...the latter for the tomato canning I planned to do as well once I got done with the pickles. Tenant’s caregiver was at her other job, so I took tenant down with me. She helped nicely, if I may say so. Seriously, she cut up to two kilos of tomatoes, and then continued on to cut zucchinis as well for our lunch.

While tenant was doing that, I started on the pickles which I’d decided to do the sweet and sour way. One by one I filled the pots (grandpa and big brother had to go to the village because of the moped...yes it is giving us trouble again) putting everything except dill, juniper berries and mustard seeds, which grandpa and big brother had to buy for me while they were out.

I’d just about filled all the pots (seven more than planned, mind you), added the herbs I had when they returned with the necessities. I added the last three things closed the lids and then started on the tomatoes. They cooked, and I started preparing the pots with lemon juice. It all fit in there ‘till the last drop, so now we have eight pots with herbal tomato mash and thirteen with herbal pickles...one pot died in the process, darn it. Spread glass and tomatoes all through the cooling bucket. Grrr.

Made lunch in-between, of course, for tenant as much as big brother and myself. Of course, as usual when I’m working with food, I wasn’t all that hungry, something for which I will undoubtedly pay later tonight, darn it.

Right now the last pots are being cooked, at which point I can finally start cleaning up ‘round here and start to get ready to head on up the mountain. I for one wouldn’t mind ending the day a little early today...in particular since the garage appointment is tomorrow and we’ll have to be a little early to make it.

Ah well, this will have to be it for the day. I’ve got a little more stuff to do, and maybe make a quick tour of the yard yet, and then it is up to my cabin terrace for some actual writing. Yay.