Stone Soup

Well, well, well, here it is Friday already!

I have been very busy since we arrived back at the country house. Monday I peeled and chopped the half bushel of field tomatoes. That took most of the day, but I kept right on going and worked into the night to can five one litre jars of Chili Sauce. I used the hot water bath method of canning, which is more appropriate for Chili Sauce.

Tuesday I got up early and began the preparation work for a batch of salsa. I used the tomatoes I had peeled and chopped on Monday, and six large green peppers, which I manually ground in my 44 year old Spong food grinder. I received the food grinder as a farewell gift from my teammates in 1970, we taught together in an open plan classroom. I taught human nutrition, and food/clothing preparation/construction, they taught art, pottery, and woodworking.

Wednesday was another salsa day, this time using the last of the previously peeled and chopped tomatoes to make pure tomato salsa. At the end of the day I had five litres of Chili Sauce and ten 500 ml jars of Salsa.

Thursday was spent processing the last of the celery given to us by Terra and Lares, the last of the stalks were chopped, blanched and frozen for soups and stews. The final chapter of the food preservation marathon was to use every scrap of vegetable to be found to make “Stone Soup”. Stone Soup at our house is soup made from whatever can be found. I started with the washed discards of celery, added frozen vegetable discards, the scraps from previous cooking episodes. That was boiled down to make a broth, which was sieved, and the roughage discarded. To that I added more vegetable broth, and vegetables: potatoes, carrots, corn niblets, peas, onion, chopped cucumber, garlic, quantities unmeasured. Then the seasonings were added, garlic granules, salt, pepper, dried basil, and a dash of lemon juice. That simmered all day long, and when Attila got home I mixed up a batch of dumplings, and fifteen minutes later we had a lovely dinner.

I am always completely flummoxed when I people eat tasteless food because they only have basic ingredients. What is wrong with them!?! A little bit of browning and braising and caramelizing in the pan can bring out incredible flavours in foods, one does not need a lot of salt and fat and sugar to “spice” things up! As well, a perfectly respectable variety of herbs can be grown in gardens. I taught all these techniques, in cooking with basic ingredients, in my home economics classes. I didn’t invent the techniques, they are tried and true.

Today I have been busy with paperwork. The receipts and bookkeeping needed careful attention, as our renovation expenses were a bit higher than we had planned for. Back to robbing Peter to pay Paul for a while I think, but that is merely annoying, one of my pet peeves.

Attila has been busy since we returned. On Monday the brakes on our little car seized. He has about one hour of daylight per day to work on projects, so that time has been used to work on the car, which is temporarily out of service. We are back to being a one car family, which is manageable as long as I turn down work. My horrid little on-call job does not pay enough to support a vehicle, let alone me, so that I won’t be accepting any shifts unless Attila gets the little car back on the road. I had previously accepted two upcoming shifts, an hours drive from home, so after honouring those commitments, I fear my ability to work has ended.

We took a drive over to our camp on Wednesday night, and loaded our big car with firewood from the trees felled earlier in the summer. It was lovely to be there. We estimate that the gas for the visit was paid for by the value of the firewood we brought back with us.

Imp and Elf have a birthday this week, eight years old! Such marvellous little people, we will call them this evening to wish them happy birthday. We couldn’t call in the morning because Attila left for work before light, far to early to call anyone.

I have been struggling with our desktop computer! I am very annoyed with Apple, they updated iTunes and that darn program interfered with the startup process, so the computer will not startup. This is well reported by Apple computer owners since September 10th, 2014. After using all my usual tricks, I now have to try to restore from a backup, and if that fails, reinstall the operating system completely. Of course, I can still startup in safe mode, but running the computer in safe mode is not a satisfying experience. I certainly won’t be going with Mavericks again if I have to reinstall, nothing but issue after issue. They must be hiring young hot shots, who are more interested in speed than quality. I guess their attitude is that people with perfectly good computers, that are not brand new, should just buy another computer. The company is getting top heavy, in my opinion.

Worldly Distractions

Weather

0°C
Date: 6:00 AM EDT Friday 19 September 2014
Condition: Clear
Pressure: 102.8 kPa
Visibility: 16 km
Temperature: -0.1°C
Dewpoint: -0.8°C
Humidity: 95%
Wind: E 4 km/h
Wind Chill: -1

Quote

“I have learnt silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet strange, I am ungrateful to these teachers.”
Kahlil Gibran
1883 – 1931