Summer's End

All day long I've had this crazy, anxious feeling.  Like I'm supposed to be doing something, but I don't know what it is, so I didn't do it.  Part of it might be the change of season- I feel like I missed summer.  Should have made better use out of the few gorgeous weeks we had!

Yesterday I processed two crates of apples.

I ended with 6 quarts of sauce, 6 quarts of juice, and a 9x13 pan of detritus that it took me a full day to bring myself to throw away.  I could have made vinegar!  I could have made pectin!  I could have made jelly!  In the end, all I've made is a bad case of heart burn and some soon-to-be compost.  Sheesh.  I'm grateful there were no broken jars, and everything sealed!  I used a mix of apples- I know one crate was golden delicious (with a few red pears scattered in.)  The second box had a right old variety- I know I saw golden delicious and granny smith.  There were tiny little pink apples that tasted like cider, too.  Pink Lady?  There were some that could have been galas or fujis.  Mixed together, they made a delicious juice!  (I'll be posting the how-to over at DIY Mama for anyone who's interested in the nitty gritty.)  The apples were a gift from a short-on-time and long-on-apples friend.  I still have another box in the garage of (delicious) apples from my mom's tree, but they'll hold for a while.  Mom still has 3 or 4 more trees that need harvesting as they ripen, it's a good thing Ernie has discovered her love of apple sauce!

I have become Wonder Boys favorite chew toy.

I'm allowing it, as long as he doesn't have teeth.  He's nearly 8 months old, and poor little bugger doesn't have teeth yet!  I could swear that he's been teething for about 4 months now- loves to gnaw on things, and sometimes he is just SO miserable.

(Not today's outfit, but fancy nonetheless!)

I wonder if part of my anxiousness today is because we skipped out, and went to a birthday party?  Little Ming Wai turned 5 today- as soon as piano lessons were over, we gathered up everything we needed, dressed the girls in their Princess Finest, and went visiting.  We ended up staying till 5:30...no naps....cupcakes....candy necklaces....and all the while, I keep trying to forget that the dishes are still on the counter, and there's no milk in the fridge, and the sun is shining so shouldn't I be harvesting all those green tomatoes before they rot on the vine like last year?  (It will be done by next Friday.  Count on it.)

But, the kids had fun.  The dishes were still there when we got home.  Wonder Boy and I did the grocery shopping after the girls went to bed.  True, nothing but math got done today for school (Ernie does that on her own, on the mornings I teach) but we can get that done tomorrow.  I even managed a decent dinner- a curry, with yellow paste I'd stashed in the freezer after making too much, chicken, fresh basil, sweet potatoes, green tomatoes, all the ripe tomatillos I could find (3 or 4), some peanut butter, and a can of evaporated milk.  The evaporated milk plus the sweet potatoes and peanut butter made a fabulously silky sauce that rivaled others I've made with cream or coconut milk.  Yum.  This paragraph would not be complete without a shout out to my husband who ate dinner.  Quietly, yes.  But he ate it.  There are three things that man does not like to eat: Mustard, peanut butter, and sweet potatoes.  Lucky him I didn't find a way to include mustard in that curry!