September already!!!

Today is September first and I can hardly believe it. It seems like this year has just flown by and I feel like I'm still trying to play catch up.

The last two days of August were chilly and blustery. It really started to feel like Autumn was on the way, and I must admit I'm kind of excited for it to get here. I know we didn't have much of a summer and some people really like the heat but I'm not the kind of girl that likes it being much more than 80-85F regularly. Mid to upper 70's is much more my kind of thing ;)

I'm not really sure what this month will hold but I do know that the next couple of days will involve apples...

I've been trying to get my hands on apples at a really reasonable price and I even hit a produce stand this morning to see what kind of a deal I could score. I was pretty impressed at the price for a box really, considering you'd pay twice as much in the grocery store...

But, as I was having coffee with a friend of mine this morning my hubbie called to say that his Grampa was on route to our place with two types of apples for us. I couldn't believe it - I was stoked! There's really no better price than free... Only shame being that I wasn't home, but he said he'd leave them on the deck for us.

I got home to find that he'd brought us two big boxes of apples, each one almost full! I was so excited... It means I'll be having a double date with them and my canning supplies for the next couple days! (Yah, I'm weird and/or easily pleased)

Well, the other exciting thing that happened today was that I bought my very first hunting license and deer tag. Yup, this means I'm definitely going hunting this fall! It's kind of a weird thing for me, since I don't know if I'm actually going to have the guts to aim and shoot at the deer when the time comes, but I'm definitely up for the challenge and am starting to look forward to it.

Not so much of a city girl after all, eh?

Good News!

Just a quick post to share some good news. I just got back from seeing my Maxillofacial surgeon for my 2 week follow up and he is so pleased with how much healing has taken place since the surgery.

AND (yes, it gets better) he is giving me the go ahead to move into ortho treatment right away.

Awesome huh?!?!?!

I should have another 4 week wait before I'm ready for ortho, but my body is healing so well & he knows I'll take extra good care of myself and my teeth so he's letting me start!

I am so excited - it means I get rid of the flipper sooner rather than later and that we're taking another step in the right direction. This is also the first time for a long time that something has happened ahead of schedule with my health and dental issues!!!

So, watch this space people - brace face will be showing up a little sooner than scheduled! :)

Now I really need to get off here and get cracking - I have so much to do today and tomorrow. We're heading camping tomorrow afternoon for the weekend so we have to pack all that stuff into the truck and for some reason while I was at the store I thought it would be an awesome idea to take advantage of the deal they had on apples, so I just bought 10 pounds of Granny Smith apples that I am planning to make canned apple pie filling with and I still have berries in the refrigerator downstairs. Not to mention the chili and scones I'm making to take with us camping... Oh and dinner for tonight...

Yikes!

Over & out!

Hello & Canning so far

Well, it's been a while since I've written on here... Not too sure why, probably just since I haven't had much to say... so I'll keep this post short so as to not bore you to death.

Last weekend we picked berries, and we picked a LOT! It's craziness how many blackberry bushes there are at the farm. It seems like with the weather this year everything is late producing fruit, the blackberries are no different. There was plenty of ripe and juicy berries for us to pick but I'd say about 75% of the fruit weren't ready yet. We picked several gallons of berries and will probably wait a couple weeks before another mammoth picking session.

So, I made jam for the first time ever! It was quite a process but so much fun, AND the jam tastes yummers too, so that's a bonus. I made two batches, one just straight blackberry and the second is blackberry, blueberry & strawberry mix. I also made a batch of blackberry pie filling and canned that, but all the recipes called for a product called 'ClearJel' that I couldn't find in any of the stores close by so I subbed with cornstarch. I don't know if it turned out ok, it seems a little runny to me, but I guess the only way to know for sure is to make a pie and see... so I guess I'll be doing that next week sometime too.

I'm still holding out for apples... I have an awesome recipe for canned apple pie filling and I'd love to have that stashed away for the winter.

Canning time!

Laugh if you will, but I have never done any of my own canning before. Probably partly due to the fact that I grew up in London and it's not really the thing to do in the big smoke.

Last year we had an awesome vegetable garden, a bumper tomato crop and grand plans of canning sauces and all sorts of goodies to see us through the winter months.

Unfortunately, my diagnosis of Graves Disease and then the dental stuff on top of that kind of put a spanner in the works and we just couldn't keep on top of the garden or get round to doing anything with the produce either. We were up to our neck with other stuff going on so we had to just let people have the tomatoes from our garden. At least they didn't go to waste - that would have been unbearable.

This year we had high hopes too. We planted our garden and were excited about being able to have our own produce to see us through the winter months. Unfortunately the weather this year wasn't quite as good as last year for tomato plants and we haven't had the bumper crop of last year that we hoped for. It's kind of sad, but hey, that's life. We will have some tomatoes from the plants but they're coming so late. I doubt we'll have much to can though.

But the canning story doesn't end there... no, no, no... We still have grand plans! We are going to whip up a batch of berry jam and I'm planning on gifting some of that to friends and family and we have grapes galore in our garden too that I will find something awesome to do with. We're going blackberry picking this weekend too and I'm planning on using some of those for the jam but most to make pie filling and we'll be getting our grubby hands on some apples too for pie filling. So, it should be pretty awesome... and there are rumours that a friend of ours might have a bunch of extra tomatoes that they'd be willing to share with us... YAY!

So, watch this space people - the canning extravaganza is going to start in the next couple days... I have no idea how easy or hard it will be, but I'm guessing it's not rocket science... and after all, we are two fully grown and fairly smart adults, I'm sure we won't blow up the house!