How We Spend a Day in a Heat Wave

I am writing this as Attila is basking in a tub of hot water, a hot bath is one of his favourite ways to relax.

We are experiencing a heat wave, with high humidity, and very poor air quality. I’ve been staying indoors in the cooler, cleaner air, and today even Attila, who can tolerate a lot of heat, decided to work on indoor projects.

The big project yesterday was canning Cowboy Candy with jalapeño peppers picked fresh from the garden. It was a small batch, only four jars. I noticed in one of the local shops, that home canned Cowboy Candy was $8.99 for a 500 ml jar, and it was not made with organic peppers as ours is. We definitely could not afford to purchase the quality of food we now enjoy thanks to our gardening and preserving activities.

The big project today was to grind pork, to make sodium and nitrite free sausage patties. This took many hours to complete. Our efforts yielded 40 sausage patties, two of which made a delicious dinner this evening, the rest went into the freezer on trays. Tomorrow we will package the patties by vacuum sealing them before returning them to the freezer.

When it is this hot, when we want to go for a walk we go to a big box store. Today it was Walmart. I found a six pound bag of bananas marked down to $1.78. I will puree them with lemon juice and freeze them in ½ cup containers for future smoothies and muffins. That is a project for tomorrow, after the big trays of sausage patties are frozen in bags, freeing up precious freezer space.

The “big banana haul”.
Two are missing, I’ve eaten them already.

My other “big find” at Walmart was Horlicks, which had disappeared from the shelves here in 2020, for unknown reasons. It is back in the “British Section” again, so I bought one. It is a malted milk powder, which is lovely mixed with hot milk, and very soothing on those nights when sleep eludes me.

It takes a lot of time to do all these things we do for ourselves, cooking from scratch, gardening, preserving food, mending worn clothing, touching up the paint on the siding, etc. The time flies, I guess we must be having fun!

Worldly

Weather

29°C (34C on our shaded thermometer)
Date: 7:00 PM EDT Sunday 4 August 2024
Condition: Partly Cloudy
Pressure: 101.2 kPa
Tendency: Rising
Temperature: 28.5°C
Dew point: 17.4°C
Humidity: 51%
Wind: WSW 19 km/h
Humidex: 34
Visibility: 24 km

Quote

“Between the lines of every story there is another story, and that is one that is one that is never heard and can only be guessed at…”
Frances Hodgson Burnett, from The Little Princess, page v
1849 – 1924

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Teri

Maggie, have you ever tried CBD lotion for not sleeping? I use to have a terrible time sleeping in the summer especially with not sleeping due to the sun rising so early but CBD lotion has really helped me. I rub a finger tip of it just above each ankle and a third on the inside of my lower arms. Most nights, I’m asleep within minutes.

I get a cream with essentially no THC in it.