Mass on the Grass

We had Mass on the Grass on the building site for our new church on Sunday!! The weather was great but it did start off very cool as we did get the frost that was predicted!!  We had a good group turn out for this special celebration and we honoured one of our oldest parishioners with our rendition of Happy Birthday - she was 97 on Sunday!!  She is the third woman on the left in the multicoloured jacket.  She is a wonderful person and always encouraging.  She is a former teacher and long time member of this parish.  

Therese

Harvesting winter squashes

Due to the prediction of frost on Saturday evening we - Paula, Cindy, Chuck and I went out to Paula's large garden and picked winter squashes!!  She had at least ten varieties and though it did not look like that many in the field we managed to fill two layers in the back of a half ton truck!!!!  That is a lot of squashes!  We wiped them to remove as much dirt as possible and then Paula arranged them on the truck bed one at a time.

We did it in reverse when we unloaded them at her house - they came off one at a time and she found places for them in her house.  They will all need a few weeks at room temperature to fully cure and then they can be stored in the basement or cold room.  I brought home three turban squashes to use as decoration and on small pumpkin and one larger pumpkin which I will be using for Halloween!!  I anticipate that I will also get a spaghetti and an acorn squash as they are not winter squashes and will have to be used with a month or so.  It was a beautiful day and with all the help it really went well!!

Therese

Sauerkraut is done!

I decanted my sauerkraut into a plastic jar today!  It is done! You can check out the first post about making it here.  Enough anyway for me.  It is milder than what you buy but I think that makes it easier to eat more often.  I am returning my quart jar to the canning corner so it can be filled with tomatoes in the next few weeks.  I have a pickle jar I think I will use next time until the canning jars start getting empty over the winter.  It really has been sitting on the counter for 2.5 weeks without a problem.  I have checked it regularly to ensure that the cabbage was below the liquid and tasted a couple of times so it really has been a very easy process.  Looking forward to doing it again.  Paula has my name on one of her big cabbages so I expect that is when I will be making some again.

Therese

Library books - some crafty projects and a couple of novels

The Cora Harrison book was good but the end was not tied up as well as they have been in previous ones - a bit of a disappointment!!  Tinkers was good but a bit of a challenge to keep the people straight as the paragraphs jumped from father to son and back and forth!  It might be worth a reread.  It is a story of a person with epilepsy and some of his life experiences.
The project books were good and had a few crazy quilting projects in them.  Unfortunately, garden and harvest are higher priorities so I will reread them later this year.

Therese

Company from MB headed back home!

I had a visit from my long time friend, Lorraine!!  We were young mothers with similar aged children in the 70's and hung out quite a bit with children all over the place.  We have kept in touch and it was great to see her last time we were in Winnipeg.  She was travelling with her oldest daughter and her oldest grandson from BC and headed back home - only needing to be there by Friday so the itinerary was loose and being made up as they went along.  It was wonderful to have them and we spent the evening visiting and catching up!!  They are headed east today and were expecting to check out the hoodoos near Drumheller this afternoon!! We will be checking out her new place when we visit this fall.  

Therese

Phase 2 Pledge Campaign kick off

It was the kick off weekend for our Phase 2 Pledge Campaign this weekend.  Brian and I were at mass helping out on Saturday evening as well as this morning!!  Both events went very well and were well received!!  Here is a picture of the "church" before everyone arrived.  I forgot to take one last night so I wanted to be sure to remember this morning.  Bonnie and Norma gave great presentations and we can a good amount of people stay at both events.  So we are on our way!!!  

Therese

Canning tomatoes - one easy way

I have been gifted with more tomatoes this year from my friend, Paula.  I have been trying to stay ahead of the ripe ones and put some in the crock pot last week to reduce which I have put in the fridge until there is enough for seven pints for the canner.  I decided that maybe I could reduce enough for a batch all at once so I blended over 28 cups of tomatoes and put them all in the stainless steel roaster and put them in the oven at 300F.

It took all day but after supper the tomatoes had reduced to almost half as much and was a nice thick sauce. I had only stirred them a few times over the course of the day and so it really was no fussing at all.  It was nice and hot so I just prepared jars for canning and in just over a half hour I had the jars in the canner processing!!  That took 40 minutes and they were ready to come out.  I left them on the counter undisturbed over night.

They were all sealed by morning and ready to be put away for making bolognese sauce, sauce for lasagna or enchiladas, or chili, etc over the winter.
I really like the no fuss - no peeling the tomatoes and a more concentrated product in the end which we find easier to use.
Will let you know how it works for us as you start using  - there may be downfalls we are not aware of.

Therese

Little "sunshine" squashes

I planted these from seeds from Mom and she uses them as a substitute for pumpkin because the colour and taste are better.  I am pretty happy with my little harvest. I started these from seed and put them in at the community garden.  They have been merrily growing all summer though they are not very big.  They need a few weeks to "ripen" at room temperature before they get stored in the cold room.  As it turns out those two events may line up perfectly.  In the mean time they will adorn the kitchen and I can enjoy they wonderful colour for a few weeks!!
Therese

Harvesting - jelly, syrup, tomatoes and applesauce

I had a few tomatoes that were spoiling so I decided to cut them up and put the good parts in the blender and then put that in the crock pot yesterday morning.  By bed time I had two jars of "sauce".  There is only tomatoes in there but it is the thickness of sauce and will be wonderful for making bolognese sauce over the winter.  I have put the two jars in the fridge and am making another batch today and will process what I have (hot pack) in the next couple of day.  Sure is nice not to have to worry about how things are going and to have a good product by the end of the day.  I am considering doing this in the roaster in the oven so I can do a whole batch at once (7 pints) to process by the end of a day.
Will let you know how it goes!!

While the tomatoes were stewing in the crock pot I got started on some applesauce.  I picked two ice cream pails of beautiful red crab apples from Alison's tree next door. I washed them, cut off the tail & blossom ends & hail pocks, cut them in half and cooked them up with enough water to just cover them.  It took them about a half hour to get nice and soft. I poured off the juice and put the fruit through the food mill and in no time I had some rosy applesauce to process.  I ended up doing one pail at a time and each one gave me 7 pints and I have about 1/2 jar left over which I put in the fridge.   I use this applesauce in every recipe of bran muffins I make regardless of what else I put in them.  This will be just about a year's supply.  I have a few jars left over from last year.

I used the juice from the crab apples to make some nanking cherry jelly.  I read on the internet that you can use this thick juice to thicken juice into jelly!!  They call it apple pectin!  I had previously frozen the juice - a bit of a left over when I was making nanking juice for Mom.  It was about a cup so I added a cup of apple pectin, 1 tbsp of lemon juice and 1.5 cups of sugar.  After about 10 minutes at a full rolling boil it was ready to put in my hot sterilized jars.  I processed them for 10 minutes as well to ensure they would seal properly!!  I am pretty happy with being able to make a bit of jelly this way.





I moved on to making black currant pancake syrup.  I had two containers of black currant juice frozen in the freezer - a bit left over from last year from Mom's and what I made from my black currants off of my bush this year.  I had a total of 3 cups of juice so I added 3 cups of apple pectin, 3 tbsps of lemon juice and 2.25 cups of sugar.  Boiled it at a full rolling boil for just over 10 minutes this it was at a soft jelly stage and then poured it into my hot sterilized jars.  I processed the jars for 10 minutes to ensure they would seal properly.

I also made some soft jelly with some grape juice that Mom gave me a while back that has been sitting in the freezer.  I had run out of apple pectin but did find a package of powdered Certo pectin in the cupboard a while back so I decided to use it up.  It has to be years old so I took a chance that it would still be good and went with it.  I put the 6.5 cups of juice in my pot and added the Certo powder along with 3 tbsp of lemon juice and 5 cups of sugar.  It was at a full rolling boil for about a half hour and was still not jelling hard so I just decided to put it into my hot and sterilized jars and was willing to settle for syrup if it did not jell.  I was fortunate that it has jelled soft so it will be acceptable for use as jelly or syrup!!   I have a bit leftover to try with pancakes on the weekend.  It was a fairly long day because I had been to the community garden on my morning walk and had brought home some carrots and beets so those needed to be washed up and put away as well.  I went to bed tired but very happy with the results of my day.  Brian has been working on the cold room and I anticipate it will be ready to store my little bounty of jars by the end of the month.  My squashes are ready to be picked as well so there will be a shelf for those as well. 

Therese

A great visit!!!

Sunday after church we arrived home to a message from Carmen and Allan wondering if we were around because they were in the area and were looking to drop by for a visit!!  Excellent!  I gave her a call back and they were soon at the house.  We spent a wonderful afternoon visiting and catching up and they treated us to supper  - Chinese food!!  Another couple of hours together!!  They headed back to the motorhome at a RV park/resort on Buffalo Lake and we headed home!!  It was a wonderful surprise! Hope they will drop by again when they are in the area!!

Therese

Suzanne's 40th birthday!!

 Suzanne turned 40 this year!!  It was the very best that we were able to help her celebrate her special day and have family all around the table. We had homemade chicken noodle soup for lunch and cleaned up the table.  We enjoyed the wonderful cake that Sal brought along from Cake Works - delicious! and then opened presents.  We all pitched in to fix her Bernina sewing machine which had issues last fall and she had decided to put off the repairs for a bit.  Brian took it apart and found the problem parts, ordered them and fortunately they arrived in enough time for him to put it all back together before Saturday.

We put it through it's paces and found that all seemed to work properly so he polished it all up and made it look like new!!  She was very pleased to have her sewing machine back in working order!!!

The kids are back at school and I expect she may have a little time to work on her wool rug in the next few days.

She is looking forward to helping out with Girl Guides this year.  Those yummy chocolate mint cookies will be on sale in October!!!

 We had made a reservation for supper at a great local restaurant so after taking the kids to the skate park so they could work on their moves we headed home to change and then off to supper!!  It was a great meal and a wonderful finale to Suzanne's birthday celebration!!  The kids are growing up and the rest of us don't feel much older than we did years ago!!  We had a wonderful day!!


Therese

Town wide yard sale!!

We attended the Clive Town wide yard sale again this year.  This is a win- win!  Lots of people with items they want to sell within a walkable distance and lots of other events in town because there are so many people in town checking the garage sales.  We found the prices were very reasonable and there were lots of items to look at!  Richard and Sylvia came with us because they were out to celebrate Suzanne's birthday with us!!  We were back home by shortly after noon to have lunch as a family!!

Therese

Pimbina!

Sylvia arrived on Friday afternoon and we headed out to pick pimbina. The trees had been trimmed this year and therefore we had to walk a little more than usual but we did pick a pail each in just over an hour. They were quite ripe and so we had very red hands by the time were were done because the fruit was crushing under the weight of being picked.  We waited until after supper to clean and cook them and were finally finished processing all of our jars after 10pm.  We got about 11 cups of juice per pail, we added 3.5 cups of melted honey and filled 7 jars (1.5 c- 2 cups) which we processed in the canner for 10 minutes to make sure they sealed properly.  So we did this twice - once per pail.  We used larger jars this year (pickle and short salsa jars) because the smaller jars were not really efficient and we found that there was no spoilage in the fridge between the opening of the jar and the time it was finished off.  So another year of putting away a good batch of pancake syrup for the winter.

Therese

Some good food to eat!!

I received a box of tomatoes from Paula last week. They were not all pretty but by today they had all ripened enough that they were needing to be turned into something else.  I took some of the really nice and red ones and made fresh salsa.  I added some celery (fresh from Paula), onion and basil from my garden and some yellow and orange peppers, salt and a bit of seasoning!  We love the fresh salsa at this time of the year!!

The rest of the box was cut up, processed in the blender a bit and then cooked down to make some tomato sauce which will probably be turned into bolognese sauce this week.

Paula lent me one of her library books called Fresh and Fermented by Julie O'Brien and Richard Climenhage (TAL)(Cold Lake Library) which gives you recipes and techniques for fermented foods.  I thought I would give their classic kraut a try!! I cut up the cabbage she gave me last week and then sliced up a quarter of it into really thin slices and put them all into a bowl.  I sprinkled 1.5 tablespoons of salt over it and let it sit for 20 minutes.  Then I started mashing and squeezing the cabbage until it started wilting and releasing liquid.  It took about 10-15 minutes.  I sterilized a jar in the microwave and then filled it with the cabbage filling it slowly and making sure to remove all the air pockets by compressing the cabbage as I went along.  As you can see from the jar, there was plenty of liquid to cover the cabbage in my quart jar.   It was helpful to have the opening big enough to put my whole hand inside the jar.  I used a layer of the outer leaf to cap the cabbage so it would remain below the liquid line.  According to the book now it is just needs to be stored in an area out of direct sunlight between 64F (17C) and 70F (21C).  It may be ready after a week but they prefer to leave it for for 3-4 weeks.  As the fermentation process starts it may overflow the jar so I have placed it in a bowl to catch the excess. The lid is on only finger tight to allow the gases created by the fermentation process to escape.  So I have put a date on my jar and I will store it on the counter and see how things go.  I did find several fermentation instructions on Instructables this past week which make the process sound fun and easy.  You can check them out here, here and here.  Sylvia has been enjoying kimchi regularly since we gave her some for Christmas last year and there are several recipes there as well so I think I will give that a try next time!

Therese

PS.  After reading a little farther in the book I found a few more recipes I would like to try.

Caraway Kraut - 2lbs of cabbage, 1 tablespoon of salt, 2 tsp of caraway seeds.  Stir the caraway seeds into the watery cabbage just before you pack into the jar. Ferment for a week.
Ruby Red Kraut - 8 cups of shredded green cabbage (1.5 lbs), 3 cups of shredded red cabbage (.5 lb),
1/2 cup of grated carrot, 1/2 cup peeled &grated beet, 4 tsp of salt, 1/3 cup of sliced green onions including the green tops.  Sprinkle salt, massage until you have a briny base and pack into quart jar.  Let sit for a week (64F-70F).  Store in the fridge for 6 months.
Firefly Kimchi - 2lbs of cabbage, 1 tablespoon of sea salt, 3 tbsp of thinly sliced green onions, 1 tbsp of ground Korean red pepper, 2 tsps of minced garlic, 1 tsp of minced fresh ginger.  Combine cabbage and salt, massage to created watery brine, add onions, red pepper, garlic, ginger and distribute throughout.  Pack into quart jar.  Ferment for a week and store in the fridge for up to 6 months.
Yin Yang Carrots - 8 cups of coarsely grated carrots ( 2lbs), 6 teaspoons of sea salt, 2-4 tsps of grated fresh ginger (can leave peel on).  Combine carrots and salt and massage to created a watery brine. Add ginger and distribute throughout.  Pack into quart jar. Leave for a week and store for up to 6 months.

Long weekend!

Richard was here on the long weekend working on his railing. It is coming along and he will soon be finished though he will have to finish installing his flooring before it can be put into place.
In their off time the guys built a puzzle.  Brian found a few smaller ones at a thrift store last week for $1 each so he brought a few home.  Mina really enjoyed making her puzzle when she was visiting this summer.  It is a collection of art supplies - paint pots, brushes, pastels, etc.
Therese