Daylaid

Yes, I did just make up a word. It's what happens when your plans for the day get waylaid. It's a useful word, no? So, here's what happened: We were sitting around in our pajamas, wondering about something...it escapes me now...when we somehow communicated with Erik and Mae (I forget who called who), and they told us we could come get the truck camper from their driveway. Their bathroom isn't finished yet, but they can now shower and, you know...other stuff. And I know they were going to be happy to have the camper out of their driveway. So, sure.

Oh yes, and there are apples on their tree ready for picking. Okay...sure. So we brought along two five-gallon buckets.

We picked up the camper, and we picked somewhere in the neighborhood of 20-30 pounds of apples. That ought to keep me busy for a few days. As I'm writing this I have both pint and half-pint jars washing in the dishwasher. Today's goal is to make some applesauce and some apple pie jam. I swore I would make no more jams or jellies this year, but then the apple pie jam sounded so yummy. So, yeah...I want that. Also on the agenda for the week are apple pie filling and maple bourbon apple butter. And I'll just keep going until all the apples are used. Applesauce will get highest priority.

It's going to be a couple of weeks of canning. There are, of course, still tomatoes and zucchini to contend with, although I can put those out of my mind until I see what's in the CSA share tomorrow. I have my eye on an apple-tomatillo salsa recipe. If there are tomatillos in tomorrow's share, I don't see how I can avoid making it, do you? And I need just a couple of smaller zucchini to make another batch of the sweet and spicy zucchini pickle chips. If there are enough peppers in tomorrow's share, I'll have to make those too. And don't forget...plums are coming. So, you can see, it's a can-do life here at the Three Cats Ranch right now. And don't even get me started with the 60 lbs. of tomatoes I've ordered from our farmers...pick-up on Saturday. Yeesh.

Just thinking about all that produce has Sadie completely 'zhausted. After we got home yesterday, she and Mike napped in the chair.

We'd stopped on the way home to pick up some corn for dinner. (The corn is so good right now.) The little produce stand where we stopped had some pretty peaches too. I chose four of those because I wanted to try these individual peach cobblers. The peaches were disappointingly unjuicy, but they still tasted good. I used this recipe, but I cut it in half. Also, the recipe called for ground flax seed, and, excuse me but, huh? I used quick-cooking oatmeal instead, and I didn't grind it. Sheesh. What is wrong with people?

So, the peaches weren't as juicy as I'd hoped, but we fixed them up by adding some ice cream and peach brandy sauce, and yum. By the way, that topping was really nice with the quick-cooking oatmeal, but I added twice as much buttermilk (to my half recipe) to get enough moisture.

We didn't have our dessert until after dinner, and I still had some time left in the afternoon to sew. I was able to finish August's Tuxedo's Tales block.

As I was editing this picture for posting, I realized I need to extend the stitching for the stem on the top flower down to the chicken's wing. I'll fix that before I do anything else today...mind like a steel trap, and all. It'll probably take longer to thread the needle than it will to stitch it.

While I was working on that, Smitty came down. He's become the most affectionate cat in his middle age (he's six now), and sometimes we just have to take a break from sewing to snuggle with the cat for a few minutes.

The only other thing I did yesterday was to get a start on the quilt shop names for the Shop Hop quilt. This one seems completely appropriate as a place to start.

So there's plenty to do today and on through the week. I'll do a little slow-stitching this morning while I wait for the dishwasher to finish with the jars, and than I'll get at those apples. I'm the boss, Applesauce. Understand, Rubberband?