Bountiful Baskets

Lately one of the blogs I read has been posting pictures of beautiful organic CSA produce and it got me to thinking about Bountiful Baskets again.  I missed most of the summer due to (my) lack of interest and by mixing up my weekends and looking for it on the wrong Saturdays.

This week I paid for a basket, then went an hour early as usual to help with the distribution.  Here is what I came home with:

4 Asian pears
5 plums
7 nectarines
6 bananas
lots of grapes
lots of Brussels sprouts
6 tomatoes
cauliflower
3 bunches of radishes
6 onions
lettuce
Tuscan kale

In addition I came home with a box for the chickens with lots of lettuce and kale leaves, along with some nectarines.

Not organic, $16.50.

Heaven Is Here by Stephanie Nielson

Several days ago an email from the library landed in my inbox.  I'd forgotten I'd requested Heaven is Here by Stephanie Nielson, but it was set aside and waiting for me at the library. 

I love requesting books from my library.  I go online, click "reserve," and wait for an email.  It may be a day later or a year later, depending on popularity and availability.  I think I requested this one about 5 months ago.  Anyway, then I drive to the library, park near the door, walk in, get my reserved book off a shelf near the door, go through the self-checkout that is in front of that bookshelf, and am back in the car in 60 seconds or less.  It's a great system and I use it often.

I've been reading Stephanie's blog for several years.  I didn't "know" her before the plane crash in which she was badly burned in August 2008.  I like to read her blog because she is relentlessly in love with being a mother, being feminine, and with her husband.

Her book is a page-turner because I want to know what emotion she will share next, what interesting bit of information about people or procedures she'll tell about, or what little idea I can glean for my own life.  If you can get a copy of the book, I recommend it.

5th grade orchestra

Caroline and Elizabeth are signed up for school orchestra lessons!  Next week we'll rent a violin and a viola and classes start the following Monday.  I love having such good benefits available to our family through the school district.

Grapefruit Jam II

I took a jar of the jam I made in the spring along with my new favorite crackers to the book club last week and the jam was a hit.  I kept looking at the tree outside with large pink grapefruits dangling in with the medium green developing ones and knew I needed to make more grapefruit jam.

I wanted more than 3 little half pints this time, so I doubled the number of fruits I picked.  You can't do that with pectin jam because you need a precise amount of pectin/fruit/acid/sugar/heat, but since this kind of jam is nothing more than fruit/sugar/heat, I knew I could double it.

Now here was the problem I ran into:  I couldn't get the jam to come up to a temperature higher than boiling.  Not gonna gel that way.  I thought about it and realized I probably needed more sugar.  I tasted the runny jam and it was sweet, but not "jam sweet," so I added a cup of sugar to the five I had already put in.  The temperature came up a couple of degrees.  I added just 1/2 a cup more and it came all the way up to 220F (104.4C).

At that point I ladeled it into jars, cleaned out the pot, filled it with water and jars and processed them for 10 minutes in boiling water.

Here is a comparison.  The first one is yesterday's jam.  You can see it is much lighter and softer.  The one on the right is the Spring '12 version and was cooked more to get it to set up and thus is much darker, but also has a more spreadable consistency.  In additon, the fruit was not as sweet in the spring and the dark jam has a nice tartness to it.  Yesterday's jam is sweet from the sugar of course, but doesn't have any tartness because the grapefruits are really sweet this time of year.

I enjoyed comparing the two batches.  Dh and I decided we prefer the new jam, but both are good.

 I ended up with:

2 pints

4 half-pints

Yum.

A big change in my daily view

This morning at 6:54 a truck and trailer rolled up across the street and by 6:56 the workers were cutting down limbs of the large tree across the street.

I have mixed feelings about changing the tree I look at 4-8 hours a day out my window.

Negatives:
Ugly shed in the side yard I never saw
Ugly swamp cooler unit I never saw
Lots of cut, stumpy branch ends now
The light, dancing branches and leaves were a great wind indicator

Positives:
Now I can see the mountains that I had to glimpse between trees
There are still some leaves at the top so I still have my weather station

It looks better in person that it does in the last picture, but still rather strange with all the bare limbs and the leaves at the top.  I'm not sure if that's the way this kind of tree is usually trimmed or not.  If so, this tree was way, way overgrown in the "before" shot.

Romney picks a running mate

Mitt Romney has chosen Paul Ryan to be his running mate in the 2012 presidential election.  I think it was an excellent choice and the ticket will appeal to Republicans from the middle to the right.  It's no secret who I'll vote for come November!

Meal Plan Sunday

Monday:  Beans and rice

Tuesday:

Wednesday:  French toast casserole

Thursday:  Sloppy Lennies  [This was really good.  I thought my family wouldn't eat it but they lapped it right up.]

Friday:  Pizza

A wonderful rest stop in Oklahoma

I have a few more pictures from my summer vacation to share.  This is a wonderful rest stop in Oklahoma.  I know most people don't post pictures of rest stops, but this one is picture-worthy.

It celebrates its location on Route 66.

There was a great play structure with nice shredded tire ground cover beneath it.  Appropriate, don't you think?

And believe it or not, this is the bathroom building:

Inside are men's and women's restrooms with marble counters and beautiful tile murals on the walls, two tornado shelters, and an Internet cafe'. 

It was the nicest rest stop I've ever seen.

Cleaning the church

Since we have two wards (congregations) who share our church building, each ward is responsible for cleaning the building every other month at 8 am on Saturday morning.

Here is my daughters' idea of cleaning:

Yes, playing in the gym.  I let them play, but I probably should have had them help me.  Next time I will.

Here is my idea of cleaning:

Yes, a nice, clean kitchen.  Luckily it was pretty clean already and my friend Amber worked on it with me so it was pleasant and easy.

I'm not a big soccer fan but . . .

I couldn't let the S. Korea vs. Japan bronze medal game go by without watching it!  And Korea won!

I can see why people like soccer--it was a very exciting game and Korea was in control virtually the entire game.  That's the best way to enjoy it!