The gardening and preserving season is winding down. Yesterday we ate our last Toasted Tomato Sandwiches of the season. Today we used the last of the green Tomatoes to can two jars of Dilly Green Tomatoes. There were four or five small ripe tomatoes in the bowl, so they were diced and added to a Chili Soup in the Instant Pot, our lunch. That is the Tomatoes gone, green and red. The steam canner was washed, dried, and put away until next spring.
Yesterday I baked bread, and today I baked Mixed Berry Squares. Attila has agreed to take whatever is left of the Squares for his lunches, freezing it in daily portions. This means I only eat one portion of dessert, once a week. I had stopped baking because the dessert sat in the kitchen all week, and I nibbled on it all week. Not good. Now the once a week baking session will provide me with a single treat, and keep Attila’s lunches interesting. One wonders how this solution took us so very long to discover!
This past week I have been following a quest. There are only so many available quests when you live in a very small house, and are isolated. My quest has been to put away at least one item in the living space every single day. It has been going well. During harvest season items come out, but they did not get put away, as we were too busy. Ever so slowly a transformation of our living space has been unfolding. Finally yesterday Attila observed that our home is getting more floory and less shelfy. Our floors resembled cluttered storage shelves for the last few months, and now they are more like floors, a place where one might walk.
The weather had been much colder, dipping below the freezing point at night. So far we are comfortable here in Mist Cottage, and the heating system doesn’t run very often, as the cooking and baking tend to keep the house cozy and warm. At present we are experienced a “warm” spell, so the hardy plants in the garden will be left to do their thing until the freezing weather comes back. Then we will be preserving the last of the harvest, mostly freezing, and some dehydrating.
Our visit to the stores last weekend doesn’t seem to have resulted in our catching Covid, yay. The number of cases are increasing rapidly around us, all in people under 50, so we will not be venturing out again any time soon. Attila and I are both eligible, as vulnerable people, to receive a Covid vaccine booster shot. We will probably be able to have the shots sometime before Christmas, fingers crossed.
I feel I have a great life, when our most challenging project is cleaning up after ourselves! We are perpetual project creators.
Stay safe dear friends!
Worldly
Weather
Updated on Sun, Nov 7, 3:45 PM
13 °C
FEELS LIKE 12
A few clouds
Wind 14 SW km/h
Humidity 69 %
Visibility 21 km
Sunrise 6:52 AM
Wind gust 21 km/h
Pressure 101.7 kPa
Ceiling 9100 m
Sunset 4:49 PM
Quote
“The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.”
George Orwell
1903 – 1950
I admire your resistance with the desserts, I admire it from a distance, a thing unattainable to me.
Are the people mostly masked in your grocery stores? Maybe going real early before the crowds come would help? Of course it is hard to get moving early…
Have a good week!
Joan, I resist desserts, but I have substitutes that I enjoy. I make muffins that have only 1 tsp of sugar per muffin, and I quite like them. They don’t feel like a dessert, but they taste good and are great to grab when I am feeling snacky. Because I monitor my blood pressure, I know that sugary things will cause it to rise above acceptable levels, that is a great motivator. If I could get away with it, health and weight wise, I would eat desserts almost exclusively, lol.
Most people here are wearing masks in stores and public indoor areas. The children do not, and a lot of our spread is from children, who aren’t vaccinated, and aren’t wearing masks. A bit of a weak link. I will say though, in our immediate area most of the cases are people between 20 and 40 years of age, they are the least vaccinated group.
Luckily we have a pick up service for grocery and hardware, and have amazon prime for delivery of things we can’t buy here. We don’t have to go into the stores, it was an exploratory excursion, and since cases are rising again, it won’t be repeated for some time to come. The hardest thing to get access to this year was fresh fruit and vegetables, as we used to frequent pick your own farms, but the last two summers that hasn’t worked out.
Have a good week!
Just about ALL my floory space and definitely ALL my shelvey spaces are full to capacity here in our tiny cottage. I have no illusions of walking around the house without being careful where I step!
Bex, I can just imagine the colour! I know you love yarn, and I’ve seen the beautiful colours of the hats and blankets, and I love the colours. What a wonderful thing to be surrounded by!
I sometimes also have problems with foods and desserts being left to sit when I thought we’d be consuming them together. In the end, I started putting things in the freezer short term and just snack on them when I feel like it. Anything less would be a big problem for my weight.
Sorry you’ve noticed an increase in COVID cases. We had one about 2 weeks ago but now the active cases are aging out and not being replaced. We went from the 90s to 47 in one week. I see Ontario had a one day bubble that was higher and now today we’re back in the lower 400s, again. I’m feeling pretty good about how the province is doing, for now.
We’ll be getting our boosters next month.
Teri, a good idea to freeze desserts so that they can be consumed at a reasonable pace. I have a weakness for sweets, if they are around they are calling my name, lol.
I am glad to hear Covid cases are decreasing where you are! The number of cases here were rapidly increasing, and now seem to be slowing a bit, but still high. Glad also that your booster shots are coming up. Ontario seems to be doing quite well for the moment, fingers crossed the trend continues.
I see one of the docs in charge of the COVID guidelines is saying they’re going to lower some capacity limits. He says removing the limits and the colder temps came together so, basically, everyone started crowding inside and so case counts started going up.
They’re going to have to learn how to finesse things, I think. Instead of going whole hog into changes all the time.
Teri, I agree, going whole hog into changes is working against us. It isn’t as if colder weather and people coming together indoors is a surprise, it happens every year without fail. This is why we are remaining isolated until the pandemic sorts itself out, the see-saw approach to public health is very trying.