How Much More Can A Canner Can?

Growing my own veggies certainly has its rewards, but at the end of the growing season, all those rewards come with the price of labor.  

Canning really isn't that hard, it's just time consuming.

And it's also very demanding because produce goes bad very quickly if you don't take care of it soon enough.  So, when the produce is ready, just like when a baby cries, you must set everything else aside and make it your priority to preserve your rewards, unless you don't mind eating rotten rewards.

A lady at church gave me a box of apples.

(Oh yay.  More work.)

I was excited about this because it's relatively rare to find apple trees in Alaska.  I don't know exactly why that is - I guess because they just don't do very well here and they have to be a certain variety.  I wanted to start my own apple tree years ago after we moved into this house, but Chuck was never into that idea.  Unfortunately, it takes several years for an apple tree to produce anything worthwhile, so it almost doesn't pay to start any apple trees now - not with Chuck's looming retirement years coming (who knows if we will end up leaving right when the apples start coming in?)

Yes, Chuck is starting to make talk about retiring in another state, but it's too sad and depressing to think about that,  so .........

back to the apples.

I've never canned apples before, so I looked up as much information as I could, and proceeded with hope that I knew what I was doing.

I had about 17-1/2 pounds of apples to work with.  This wouldn't have been so bad if the apples were larger, but all these small apples took a long long long time to core and peel.

After getting about halfway through them, my apple corer tool broke.

Argh.   (what cheap junk!)

And that made the rest of the job seem even more tedious and long.

But I got through it.

I divided my apples up into 5 pound increments.  Focusing on 5 pounds at a time seemed less overwhelming than 17-1/2.

I used 10 pounds for plain ol' sliced apples that I can use for pies or whatever.

And out of the rest of them I made applesauce.

I ended up with 6 pint jars of sliced apples, and 8 1/2-pint jars of applesauce.

It turned out that apples are very easy to can because there's nothing to measure, and no chemical science behind it.  

Just very time consuming to prepare the apples.

It took two days to get these apples canned, and I could finally relax.

But then I checked to see how all those tomatoes were doing that I put in brown paper bags to ripen.

Siiiiiiiggggghhhh.................!

I guess I got more canning to do.

In the picture it might not look like a lot, but.......it's a lot.

Especially when you look at them and think about the long tedious job of coring them and peeling them.  Each individual one.

I didn't plan on spending my day doing this today, but I know it's gotta be done asap.

But I just remembered I have to bowl tonight, so these tomatoes will have to wait until tomorrow because I hate to start a big job like this if I'm not sure I can finish it. (sometimes I wish I had a maid to help me get things done.)

I never thought I would say this but........I think I'm sick of canning now.

I don't even really wanna look at that big pile of tomatoes sitting on my counter.

If I wait long enough, maybe I can get Chuck to help me with them.

And this is only half of them.  There's still a lot more green tomatoes in my pantry that I will have to deal with after they turn red.  

But I suppose it would do me much better to think about how blessed we are to have them, instead of thinking about the work involved.  At least I can take a break from buying canned tomatoes for awhile, which have been linked to cancer (so some say).

In the meantime, when I'm not busy in the kitchen hording my winter vittles like a squirrel, I'm still working on my Halloween plans.

Only a few weeks away!  YIKES!

So much to do, so little time.

I started working on some cards and also made these scarecrow treat boxes.

I love getting creative with my Halloween stamps!

It is SO fun!

Can you find the Waldo scarecrows hiding in my pumpkin patch?

They look pretty cool when they're all lined up on the windowsill.

Hmmm..........I wonder if I could somehow attach them to a scarecrow body.

This time of year, I'm always thinking.

I hope my next post won't be about canning.

We were invited to go on another 4-wheeler trip this weekend to Knik Glacier, so if it's not too cold out that day, maybe I will have something else to post about.

But hey, you're the one who keeps coming back to read my boring posts, so what can I say?

While you wait for my next post, be sure and count your blessings.

All of them - right down to the last tomato.

God is good.

Our New Church Building

At last we are moving into our new church building!

We have been waiting for this for YEARS, particularly anxious since May of last year when we sold our old building, which is now a funeral home.  We have been conducting our Sunday worship services in the "funeral home" for over a year, and this transition mode seemed like it was lasting too long because we were going without our Wednesday night classes, and also no potlucks.  I will admit that I was pleasantly getting used to not having classes on Wednesdays, but I am really glad that we can all get reunited again as a church family should be.

Yesterday was our first worship service, so during the past two weeks, several people have done what they could to move stuff over from the old building to the new one.  Me and Chuck cleared out a bunch of junk that was all stashed in one room (now the Young Adult room), and we hauled all the junk out to its proper places.  And then we vacuumed up the construction dust out of three of the classrooms that were ready to be vacuumed.

Here is one of the rooms that I will be teaching in, starting in December.

I like to call this "my room".

There's nothing to see in there, except for some more dust that Kirkland left on the carpet after he hung up the dry eraser board.  Sort of annoying after I had it all vacuumed, but I guess it's a small price to pay to have a dry eraser board in there, which is very important to me.

If I'm not needed in the 3rd-5th grade class, I will be teaching in here instead:

I prefer to teach the older class cuz you can do more with them since they are better at reading and writing, but depending on what the lesson is, the younger class can be more fun if I think of a fun activity to do with them that would be too lame for the older kids.  So I always tell Mark to just put me in either one where he needs me.  I will find out which one when the time comes.

Our preschool classroom now has it's own toilets.  

I asked PW to take a picture of me next to them so you can see how tiny that little one is.  It is the teeniest tiniest toilet I have ever seen!  Isn't it the cutest?

Robert said the delivery truck actually said "PEE WEE" on it.

Here is our auditorium:

We only had enough chairs to fill up half the room - I think it is in our plans to purchase more.  I think I heard someone say that a few people had to stand yesterday, but I don't know if that's true cuz we were sitting towards the front. The rocking chairs in the back are for the moms (or anyone) who needs to rock a tired baby.  I hope they fixed the squeaky ones!

Here is a picture of our "fellowship hall".

We need to add more tables in there. Yesterday during potluck, some people had nowhere to sit.  It'll be so nice when we have our holiday dinners and other special events because in the old building we used to have to clear out the auditorium to decorate it, and it was always a lot of work.  Now we can just decorate this room without having to clear out any furniture.

Now here is MY department - the kitchen area!

I am going to be making the potluck drinks again, a job that I am so excited to be doing again.

But as you can see, the kitchen is still unfinished and is a disorganized mess.  This row of tables is for all the potluck food.  

I was disappointed to see the inside of the kitchen set up like this:

They have the drink table set up right in the middle of traffic flow.  More on that a little later.  First we gotta find all my STUFF.

Me and Chuck searched through all the boxes to find all the things I need to make my job efficient and successful.  We went through a lot of boxes but eventually I found everything I need.  The only thing lacking was a kitchen sink which isn't installed yet.  So the next morning we had to haul water from the Janitor's Closet which was ALL THE WAY ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE BUILDING!  And it's a really big building!  Seems even bigger when you have to make multiple trips carrying big heavy containers of water.  I told Chuck we should've brought our wagon (or any kind of cart with wheels), but it turned out that several people helped us haul water, so it wasn't too bad.  I just hope they have a sink in the kitchen by next week.

But I wasn't complaining about that part cuz I know that's just a temporary thing - I had a different complaint, and I did certainly let myself be heard!

See those tables on the right side, covered with boxes and junk?  Those tables are put there to be "crockpot warmer tables".  When people come in, they are supposed to put their crockpots there and plug them in to keep their food warm, and then later when potluck starts, all those crockpots get moved to the tables on the other side of the wall (as shown in one of my above pictures - you can figure it out). Anyhoo, this arrangement did NOT work for me AT ALL!  It was hard enough for me to get all those drinks done in an unfinished disorganized kitchen with no running water, but then add people who mill around, standing in my way, and people just walking through there as if it were a thoroughfare,  and people going in there to get something to drink before I'm even done making them - no way is that gonna work for me.  I will go nuts if I have to deal with that every Sunday.

So after worship service, me and three other ladies were standing by and observing how potluck was going, and how the potluck line itself was working, and we discussed the glitches and how we can improve them (or get rid of them).  And I opined to them about my situation, and we are going to keep trying different things until we get it right.  I suggested putting those crockpot tables on the other side of that wall, but the problem is that the outlets are on the inside.  I would really like to have the drinks so they are facing out though the window, so people don't even need to go into the kitchen at all. Actually, that is how I envisioned it was going to be, so I was disappointed and frustrated with this setup.  I don't know how we're gonna end up doing it in the end.  All I know is that I cannot keep doing it the way it was done yesterday.

I must try to be patient while we figure something out.

Anyhoo, our first worship there was really nice.  After being so crowded in our old building, it was nice being able to walk from one part of the building to another without running into a "road block". Right now things are a little chaotic, a lot of things still need to be done in the building, but I know in time we will all feel quite at home there.

Now for my other subject that you will probably get bored with.  We had a couple warm sunny days last weekend, probably the last warm sunny days we're gonna get before the snow flies, so we took advantage of it and finished harvesting everything that was left in the garden.

Got lots of tomatoes:

Most of them are sitting in brown paper bags right now.

Carrots:

I don't know why, but this is the 2nd year now that my carrot crop left me disappointed.  Most of them for some unknown reason stayed baby-sized.  Oh well, they still taste really good!  I wish the store-bought carrots tasted like these!

Pumpkins and squash:

I got 5 pumpkins out of my garden, so that's not too bad.  Plus my friend Marlene gave me one that she didn't want.  I will probably still buy some though.  I can never have too many of those sugar pie pumpkins.  Marlene also gave me a squash that she didn't want.  I don't know how anyone can not want a pumpkin and a squash, but she knows I look forward to those every year.  Maybe she was paying me back for letting her pick all the blueberries she wanted.  And I also gave her a few bags of my tomatoes cuz she said she didn't get very many of her own.    It's kinda nice having abundances  of harvests that we can trade and share!

My poor, poor, poor, poor sunflowers:

Winter is coming and they are not gonna have enough time to finish doing what they do.  Plus they've been blown over by the wind a couple times, I'm surprised they're even still alive.  I don't know what to do with them, other than just let them die and dry out and then I can use them for Halloween decor.

Well, that's about it for now!

Alaska State Fair 2016

Today was a really nice day to go the Fair!  The weather was perfect!  It was so warm out, we actually got away with wearing shorts, and never got cold.

The Alaska State Fair did something a little different this year:

They decided to go smoke free, which is nice for us non-smokers.

I saw on the news that the Alaska State Fair is the first and only one in the country to do this.  I don't know if that's really true or not. I also don't know how many, or if any, business will be lost because of this decision, but there are so many people that go to the Fair, the few that won't go now probably isn't significant enough to be missed.  Now if they could only do something about all the weirdos.

But really, we picked a good day to go cuz we didn't see too many weirdos today.

But I think most of them come at night, and we don't usually stay there that late.

As usual, we just mostly did a lot of walking around, just looking at the same ol' stuff that they have every year.  Here is one of buildings where we always go into:

I know it's not exactly the "Round Barn" in my home town, but it's where all the animals are, like sheep, goats, pigs, cows, rabbits, chickens, and even a reindeer.

And it is also the place where you find the giant produce display.

This year there was a new record for the giant pumpkin.

Here are some of the other entries:

And here are some creations made out of potatoes:

Then we walked around some more.  Here was a little show of a couple guys doing tricks on their bicycles:

And some Native Alaskans doing a little dance:

Chuck's food of choice this year was a reuben sandwich, which was actually pretty good. 

The exhibit this year was about the Ice Age.  It was pretty cool, but kinda lame at the same time.  They had these life-size animals that moved around mechanically, like robotic toys.

I guess I can understand why it would be appealing to kids.

These were supposed to be (I think) baby saber-toothed tigers, but the way they moved their heads, to me they more resembled evil monkeys.

And of course, I expected something like this to be displayed:

yeah......rrrrrriiiiiiiggghhht........

So that was pretty much it.  We debated whether or not we wanted to stay for the Demolition Derby. I thought it would've been fun to see that, but Chuck - the poor soul can just never relax and have fun - he wanted to get back home and keep working on the deck (sanding and staining).  He just hates not working when the sun is shining.  A farmer boy he will always be.  Don't wanna let that sunshine go to waste when there's work to be done!

So anyhoo, here are a few miscellaneous things I wanted to post on here.

Remember when I mentioned the corn chowder I was thinking about for my Halloween dinner?

Well, I tried it.  The soup turned out pretty good.  When the cheese melted, it gave the look that I was sorta looking for, but I might have to keep experimenting with it. The rest of the menu will be remain a secret.

Beanie really doesn't want to participate in Halloween, but we aren't giving her much choice.

Speaking of Beanie, here is what happens if she wants to come into the house when the screen door is shut:

Naughty kitty!

This is what makes is so hard to let her outside.  If we let her out, we have to keep the screen door open for her, which lets all the bugs in. Plus, we also have to keep the glass door open too, and some days it's too cold to have it open. If the screen door is shut and no one is there to open it for her, she climbs it.  Argh!

We are trying not to get her declawed unless we really have to, but when she does things like this, it scores a point for the possibility of getting it done.

well, that's about all for now