Leavin' on a jet plane

Fortunately I do know when I'll be back again...Sunday.

My cousin Ryan is getting married this weekend in Houston so I am flying down for the festivities sans familia. His fiance is Vietnamese, my family is semi-redneck. My family flew down from Ohio today including my 81 year old grandmother on her first flight. I join them tomorrow morning, no more nights in a hotel be than absolutely necessary. I am really excited for the cultural experience and from what I've heard and read about Vietnamese weddings it should be spectacular. I figure I will spend most of the weekend on alert to try and keep some of my more colorful relatives from embarrassing us all.

We start off with a rehearsal dinner late tomorrow afternoon. My mother has grand plans for shopping--go figure. PDQ put in her souvenir requests. Then Saturday morning we go to the brides house for the ancestor ceremony, then the wedding ceremony and that evening the reception. I am, of course, over packed because I really have no idea what is appropriate. I feel good about the dress I scored at Target (of all places) for the reception but outside of that its all guesses!

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I am thankful to be able to join my family for this special occasion. I can remember the day Ryan was born, I was 8 and my aunt spent the day sitting in a lawn chair beside our house in a red dress having contractions until it was time to go to the hospital.

In a pickle

Somewhere early in the summer I decided I wanted to make pickles. I wasn't thinking any old pickle either. I wanted to make my grandmother's sweet pickles. They stand out in my mind as one of those things that makes me think of grandma and family gatherings. Not only did her pickles taste great but they were a bright green color that caused much giggling among my cousins and I.

Grandma is in a nursing home after a stroke last November (right after she got off the red hat float in the Christmas parade). She isn't quite who she was before mentally or physically and it has impacted me more than I might have thought. Part of me wants to make sure I can preserve (pun intended) our family history. Unfortunately, no one can find the recipe. I have scoured the Internet and found a similar sounding recipe and the wise ladies over on gardenweb.com confirmed that their family recipes included green food coloring which they have since omitted.

I was originally a bit daunted by the prospect of making ANYTHING that takes 8 days. Really, my attention span is more like 8 minutes. I like to bake bar cookies because it takes less time. Like so much else, this has been a process and I've learned to enjoy it. Yes, you do something everyday for 8 days but the work isn't hard. The first 4 days I boiled water and poured them on the cukes. Yesterday I made the syrup, added my food coloring and cut the cukes into chunks. Tonight, it is syrup boiling and on Sunday the final canning of the pickles.

Just seeing grandma's crock in my kitchen makes me smile. During the summer it often sat in the chair by her back door. There was a smell of cucumbers and spices in the air. My first batch is a single recipe and it fills maybe one third of the crock, I remember hers being filled right up to the top and I realize how much work it must have been--I bought my cucumbers, she and my grandfather grew theirs in a rocky plot in the backyard. I have the crock, hopefully the recipe will be close enough that we can all remember the "good old days."

Being the ant--my obsession with summer produce

This weekend I felt a bit like the ant laying up stores for the winter while the rest of my family played grasshopper. I am sure all my little bugs will enjoy it this winter. There is such great fresh food available right and I want to take full advantage. Next week we starting getting a weekly box of produce from Shaw Farm CSA. This weekend I put away 4 quarts of peaches and 4 bags of lima beans to eat this winter, as well as adding to my blueberry stash.

Friday night I picked these at Larriland Farm, putting my blueberry picking total for the summer somewhere up around 15 pounds (not bad for someone who never picked a blueberry before! It was a beautiful night, there was the threat of storms and a wind that cooled things off. I was out in the blueberry patch all by myself. Although there were a lot less berries than the last time I was out, the picking was a whole lot easier, no worrying about the green ones, they just weren't there. I can home and made blueberry muffins (with a little help from the girls) for breakfast on Saturday morning. I used this recipe from Food Network. Alton never steers me wrong. They were great right out of the oven. This morning I wasn't nearly so impressed, they were a bit dry. I would guess that has more to do with my over baking in the convection oven than Alton's recipe.

In addition to the last of the blueberries I picked the first of the summer peaches. I picked just over 20 pounds (to get the discount, I am a sucker f0r a discount). It was the first day of peach picking and the trees were heavy with fruit. I had a good time ducking into the middle of the trees to find the juiciest peaches--lots of them were still on their way to even "firm" ripe. Once home I spent lots of time on the computer trying to find new recipes to make with my bounty. So much for new recipes, I went for the tried and true cobbler recipe combining my blueberries and peaches.

Fruit Cobbler (from the Gilman United Methodist Church Cookbook)

Cover the bottom of a 9x9 pan with fruit

Mix together:

3/4 c sugar
3 TBSP butter
1 c flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 c milk

Cut the butter into the dry ingredients and then add milk and stir until it comes together. Spread over fruit (don't worry about covering the entire thing).

Mix:

1 c sugar

1 TBSP cornstarch

1 c water

Pour over the entire pan.

Bake 40 minutes at 375F.

I baked zucchini bread using Gretchen's recipe and put one loaf in the freezer. Gman and I loved it, haven't gotten the kids to try it yet. I also put together a peach pie and put it in the freezer as a surprise for dessert one night next week when we are on vacation with my family. So that is the end of the baking for the weekend.

I also gave canning a try for the first time this weekend. I LOVE hot pepper jelly so I decided to give it a try. I used this recipe from the nice folks at SureJell. I am not sure how it tastes yet but it did all set up and the jars sealed (love the little pinging sound as they go). Since the jelly went so well I was on a quest to make pickles as well. I am in search of the recipe for my grandmother's sweet pickles. My grandmother is in a nursing home following a stroke and my Mom can't find the recipe. I found one on a forum that I sent to Mom to go over with grandma and see if it sounds close. It will be a big project, its a 10-day process adding boiling water or syrup to the pickles every day while they process. The end product is so worth it, both in taste and for the memories of the big crock sitting in my grandparents kitchen for most of the summer as she made different kinds of pickles. Until I find the recipe, a crock and 10 days where I have time to tend to the pickles everyday that project is on hold.

To test my pickle making skills I started out on Sweet and Spicy Pickles. Next time I will heed the warning to wearing gloves while dealing with the jalapenos! My skin cracked on my index fingers kind after using the mandolin to slice all the peppers. It was kind of like when you put Elmer's on your hand as a kid and then moved it. Not so cool when its your skin. No long term harm though, things are back to normal if a little rough today. Again, all the jars sealed, now they need to age 10 days before we give them a try.

Very busy domestic weekend. It reminded me again how much I hate my kitchen, not nearly the room I'd like to do these big projects but thinking back its WAY bigger than my grandmother's kitchen and she turned out all kinds of good stuff.

Big hair & parachute pants

Mark Wills does a great job of recounting my growing up years (lyrics here). I'll be reliving it this weekend back in my hometown with the class of 1987, there has been some speculation about the appearance of parachute pants for those who can still fit into them.

In preparation there has been much picture posting, here is a picture of the fourth grade from my elementary school in 1979. I am third in from the left, second row from the top, tan dress and goofy glasses.

Good plan, bad execution

I had a great workout today, 45 minutes on the elliptical, crunches on the ball, a good strech on the stretcher thingie (yeah, that IS the technical term). We went to Rita's Italian Ice after dinner and then hit the Asian grocery store for sushi making ingredients (more on that later). I, being the Martha that I am, pickled some ginger for our future sushi experiences, its going to kill me to wait weeks until it is done. Then I told Gman I was heading upstairs to work on some thank you cards. He beckoned me to come give him a kiss first. Being in a good mood, I thought I'd jog over and do a faux jump into his lap. Good plan, bad execution. My sock covered foot hit the laminate floor off the edge of the rug, I heard a tearing noise come out of my leg, managed to not do a complete split and landed on the floor in front of him curled up in pain. Gman said he heard the noise as well (I was hoping it was just my imagination). OUCH!

It figures, finally, after 2 months of a meeting every Wednesday at 1 o'clock I managed to get free and sign up for the noon spinning class tomorrow. My plan was almost foiled today when I needed to schedule another meeting but I managed to take care of it today instead. Now, I'll be lucky to walk tomorrow let alone cycle. I took some ibuprofen, a hot bath and need to get some ice on it. I read up on quad strains and figure its pretty minor but am NOT looking forward to extracting myself from the bed in the morning.

Oh yeah, the Asian market. It was huge and packed. There was the smell of fish in the air which Boobah pointed out--loudly. What is that smell. Mommy, do you smell something? Something smells gwooooooooossssssssss. Boobah, its fine, could you keep it down, we'll be done soon. Her eyes were as big as saucers when we saw the ice lined trays filled with fish--Mommy, are they alive?! Nope Boobah, they are dead. At the end of the aisle she exclaims, I knew that's what I smelled, its HAMSTERS! I tried not to laugh too hard as I explained to her that they weren't hamsters, they were lobsters. Close, but no cigar.