Moolie - Happy Thanksgiving :)

[FarmerChick]

Feels like we are bulging at the seams with good things to take us through winter

THIS is one of the best feelings in the world, isn't it? Glad you are so well stocked!!

 

[BarredBuff]

It is a great feeling!

 

[Corn Woman]

Mmm, love Tomato Soup! I love a day in the kitchen as well--makes me feel organized and I feel just plain good when I've got a lot accomplished in a day.

Never heard of plumcots though, or do you mean jam made from plums and apricots? Never had that either, but sounds yummy

A few people around here have the really tiny crabapples but I've never had them--I think jelly is really all you can do with them because they are so small.

Totally hear you on feeling a bit smug/secure about having lots of jars ready to go, I've been into Canadian Tire (local hardware/general store chain) and the local Co-op grocery store in the last week and noticed big displays of jars and canning supplies and it feels really good to have everything in place for whenever I want to can something.

Plumcots are a hybrid fruit of apricots and plums and they are delicious. I planted a tree but its only a couple years old so still waiting on mine. The variety I planted is called Spring Satin and I did get 1 this year I really enjoyed it.
My garden got hit by frost last night but mostly just the plants suffered and not the veggies. A few tomatoes will be chicken food and the rest will be gleaned this weekend. It's a little sad when the season is finally over but I can have a little time to put my feet up. I guess I will be trying green tomato salsa for the 1st time so there is still plenty to do.

 

[moolie]

Snow a couple of days ago, so fall has swiftly turned to winter. We're supposed to get a Chinook on Monday (warm winds from the Rockies that warm up this part of Alberta and melt all the snow) so I know it will all be gone again soon, but it's got me thinking about Christmas rather than Halloween!

Plumcots are a hybrid fruit of apricots and plums and they are delicious. I planted a tree but its only a couple years old so still waiting on mine. The variety I planted is called Spring Satin and I did get 1 this year I really enjoyed it.

Sounds interesting

I actually ended up making a batch of apricot jam on the same day as a batch of plum jam, and didn't have enough of either for that one last jar, so mixed the two together to make one jar of "plumcot" and it is fabulous (didn't can it because it wasn't quite full enough). Will have to make more "on purpose" next year!

 

[moolie]

Hope all of our neighbors to the south had a lovely Thanksgiving with family and friends :

Well, it seems that my journal languishes a bit during the colder months because I'm not in the garden every day or doing nearly as much canning, but here's an update on my life

We've now had three rounds of snow followed by Chinook melts run through, bit of snow still on the ground at the moment but warmer temps forecast for the weekend to be followed by more snow next week. "Cold" at this time of the year is usually around -15C/5F and "warm" is between freezing at 5c/40F, last week we had several days at 9C/49F. So we're well into our winter weirdness weather, this next snowfall may stick around longer if we're actually at "winter", or may melt within a few days as well. And we should be heading into colder weather into December (-20C/-4F).

Just did another big "freezer cook" session this week and put up about 23 dinner meals, feels good to have those choices in addition to all the home canned meat (ground bison, chicken chunks, pork chunks, bison chunks) and home canned convenience meals (plain beans, baked beans, 5 kinds of soup at the moment, bison stew, meat sauce) that are currently on the shelf. I'm down to my last 6 jars of ground bison (which we use quite regularly for quick easy dinners) so I'll be watching prices this weekend and next at the farmers market and picking up a couple of big bulk packages to get canned up.

I also did a big bake a few days ago--a big batch of oatmeal cookies and one of peanut butter cookies to go into the freezer for school lunches, two pans of fudge brownies and one of blondies also for the freezer, several loaves of banana bread and applesauce bread all for the freezer (although we did enjoy a fresh applesauce loaf!) and two bakes of whole wheat bread from our wheat, also for the freezer. I hate running out of bread, and we enjoyed one fresh warm loaf with our dinner that night so that's also a bonus on baking day

Hubs and I have also been clearing out clutter--it seems that during the busy gardening/canning summer months that we aren't always as tidy as we should be and things pile up. Hubs built us a new deck (ours was horribly rotten) in September when decking was on sale, so that meant an immediate dump run to get rid of the old deck, but he had a few other projects on the go throughout the warmer months and we've just cleaned out the garage of all the leftover bits and pieces and got the usable leftover wood into his shop in the basement, plus added the smaller bits to our firewood pile--which means we can again get the car into the garage (important now that it's cold out!)

The clean and organized garage feels super so we've since been tidying inside the house. We've totally tidied the bookshelves (papers and other junk left on shelves), the kitchen (canning to be put away in the basement etc.), and our bedroom--which becomes a bit of a "piling place" for little piles of clutter (when we tidy up the family room for company/visitors). The papers are all sorted/filed/recycled and everything else is back in it's place, so it just feels good to look around my house.

We bought some paint on a big sale back in the spring, and over the summer months we have slowly been painting our family room and kitchen, and now I'm working on the hallway before moving on to the bedrooms. We bought a soft robin's egg blue for the main rooms and hall, and it looks great. One daughter chose a lavender colour for her room, the other an apple green, and we chose another slightly lighter soft blue for our room. We moved into this house about 5 years ago now, and it was all painted a sort of "greige" putty colour that was really starting to get to me, so when the paint sale at Rona happened we bought some colour for our home!

Over the years we have slowly been picking up second hand real wood furniture and we are now finished replacing all the "sawdust wood" furniture. We started when we got married by buying a coffee table and two end tables, then we used Christmas money from hubs' Grandma to buy a solid oak pedestal table for our kitchen. When we moved into this house we added a dining room that we hadn't had before, and found a 1950s teak dining table with chairs and a hutch for a super deal on kijiji. We had originally bought IKEA dressers for our bedrooms when we got married and as our kids were born, but after learning that "sawdust wood" oozes formaldehyde into the air over time (I have asthma) we've been watching garage sales and kijiji for years in order to replace those items. We've found great deals over the years and replaced our girls' dressers first, and we just recently finally found two dressers for our bedroom. The two new dressers that we found are from the 1940s and need refinishing, so that will be my big winter project.

Almost done with our Christmas presents for this year, mostly home made things: home canned items like jam/relish/chutney, home made photo calendars of family photos from the past year for our parents, "recipe in a jar" (brownies, cookies), some home sewn items (pajamas for our girls, niece and nephew), a few wooden toys for the niece and nephew that hubs has made, but also some purchased books and art supplies for our kids. This weekend I will do our Christmas cards and letter, and then we'll be doing some baking for a gingerbread house, some cookies, and I want to put a couple of pies into the freezer so it's less hectic when all the family arrives because Christmas is coming up SO quickly!

So, that's were life is at chez Moolie at the moment!

 

[Icu4dzs]

The gift that keeps on giving...a letter from home.
Glad things are going well.
You do keep DH kinda busy though.
Saepe Expertus, Semper Fidelis, Fratres Aeterni
Trim sends
//BT//

 

[Corn Woman]

Wow you have been busy. How nice it is to get organized and keep the freezer stocked up for quality on the go meals. Way to go on making the Christmas gifts, I love those types of gifts and the care that goes into them. My plan is to get the canning room all straightened out this weekend, I confess it may take longer than one weekend.

 

[BarredBuff]

You have been very busy my friend! I'm more or less here just for a wave.

 

[moolie]

Thanks for dropping by to say "hi" everyone, it's good to catch up with you all! Most days that I pop in to check the forum there's so much reading to catch up with that I don't really get around to posting much. Especially since at this time of year I'm doing less "ss" stuff and more just living off the fruits of our labours over the growing months, so I have less to share.

 

[BarredBuff]

You get to do the most fun part now, EAT IT!