Cooking and not Sewing

Whew!  It's been a busy, hot day in my kitchen.  And with the temperatures relatively warm outside, I couldn't have chosen a worse time to be running all my heat-producing appliances.  But before I get to that, I want to take a moment to thank all of you who have left such kind, loving, and heart-warming comments about George.

 

I'm sad to say, nothing has changed on the George front.  We've continued to search for him daily, but we have found not a single sign of him.  Early on the day he disappeared, he had wormed himself out of his shirt somehow.  I'm glad of that because if he hadn't, I'd be worried he was hung up on it somewhere.  Knowing he wasn't wearing it gives me some small amount of comfort.  I bring this up because we haven't found the shirt anywhere either.  It's a little strange.  I keep thinking that if we find the shirt, we'll find George, even though I know the two things have nothing to do with one another.  In any case, he's been gone long enough now that we are pretty much giving up hope that he will return.  We sure are going to miss that sweet face.

Here's something I've been thinking about:  We started doing battle with the squirrels the day George disappeared.  As I've said many times on this blog, we try to live in harmony with the critters that inhabit our property as much as possible.  But living in harmony is a two-way street, and sometimes the squirrels don't uphold their end of the bargain.  Recently, they've started eating all my flowers and they dug up all of my tulip bulbs and ate them.  Every. Stinking. One.  So we decided to trim the herd.  We bagged our first one on the same day George disappeared.  Mike and I have considered that this is our just desserts for going to war with the squirrels.  I half imagine that a gang of squirrels dragged George into their burrow where they have him tied up, gagged, and blindfolded.  I keep expecting to find a ransom note at the door step that says:

So far nothing.  I will, of course, keep you posted.  In the meantime, I sure am missing my snuggle cat.

So to pass the time, I canned another batch of blueberry chutney today.  Then, because I had leftover blueberries, I made a blueberry crisp.  Yes, it's comfort food.

I used a recipe I found in The King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion, a new cookbook I picked up about a month ago.

Lots of good stuff in there.

And then I made the components for some strawberry ice cream.  I went to the grocery store, and they had strawberries for $1 per pound.  Pretty cheap, and they actually looked good.  They weren't Oregon berries, but I figured they'd work for strawberry ice cream, and I have had a yen for that too.  Sugar is my best friend while I mourn my kitty.

The custard and fruit are both cooked in my recipe, and so they'll have to sit in the refrigerator for 24 hours to cool before I freeze them.  That will be tomorrow's kitchen task along with making my zucchini relish.  I'll show you how I do the zucchini relish tomorrow.

For today, I'm ready to do some sewing.  I want to get into the sewing room and make at least one block before it's time to start dinner.  What have you been up to today?