A Day of Lasts

Today I canned the last of the tomatoes.

Thanks to Dasha who convinced me to try red tomato chutney for the last of this season's tomatoes. She sent me her recipe, but as a dumb American, I couldn't get comfortable making the conversion from metric measurements to whatever it is we use here. Even though I studied it and figured it, it ended up seeming like an awful lot of vinegar, and so I resorted to the recipe in one of my favorite preserving cookbooks, Marisa McClellan's Food in Jars.

The chutney is so delicious and sweet. I wondered if it wouldn't be so similar to salsa as to be indistinguishable, but it is completely different. It is thicker and sweeter. It should be good served over eggs or on sandwiches, but it would also be good just spread on toast, like jam. Yummy. I'm so glad I gave it a try. Of course that just means I'll need more tomatoes when I do my canning next year.

And I'll just say right here that I am terribly disappointed in the plums. They have not done their part, which was to ripen on time for canning. How difficult can that be, Plums? Huh? Sadly, I'm afraid we'll miss the plums this year; although, at the rate they're going, they may not be ripe before we get back.

Mike installed a fancy schmancy different kind of hitch on the fifth wheel last night, and so he drove it to work today just to make sure it went down the road okay. And that just meant there was no way for me to do any packing today. Boo. Hoo. (Not really.) It gave me a chance to work on the last block of the Gardener's Journal quilt. And I finished it!

(I didn't get it laid out very flat for its picture, did I?) Anyway...I sewed it to the rest of the quilt, and there it is...all the blocks are sewn together at last!

And that is the last sewing I'm going to do before we leave. That means the quilt still needs its borders, but I'll save that for when we get back.

Thanks to all of you who gave me your opinions about the inner border. When I went to the fair on Tuesday, I had time to stop off at a fabric store. And I should have known that the Universe would have the last word about what color it would be. When I went into the store, I was still undecided about what color to use, and you all were pretty evenly split on which blue was best. Armed with my swatches, I ended up with this pretty turquoise batik. 

There was no royal blue that I was happy with, and so I decided it was going to be turquoise. I've used this batik in a quilt before, and I was sorry I didn't have any left. I ended up buying some extra so that I can use it in some future quilt. It's such a pretty color.

And that would make this my last blog post before we leave. Tomorrow will be crazy busy with packing, and so the next time you hear from me, I'll be miles away from here.