I didn’t get enough tomatoes to make soup but I was gifted tomatoes from Melonie so I made this Deborah Madison favorite.
Saute some shallots in butter. Cut up your tomatoes and put them in the pot with salt. Let them slow cook all afternoon.
Whir with the stick blender. Strain into a new pot. I often skip that step. I add a plop of cream.
It’s some weird trick of the light but this photo look like there’s a golden lump in there.
We were originally going to go to Orleans at the end of March. Clearly that didn’t happen.
Then we were going to go the weekend after Labor Day which was the week with so many terrible fires.
Then we picked another weekend when but a there was a giant rain storm in the forecast. The rain is much needed, but I didn’t want to drive all that way and then sit in the house.
We finally made it happen.
The weather was perfect: 84 degrees in the day but cooling off at night. It was a little bit hazy from the smoke but not terrible. One night we came home from dinner and we got out of the car and looked at the sky and all three of us gasped because the sky was so clear and there were so many stars.
I was curious whether anyone had seen Starlink. Auntie said she’d seen it but it wasn’t visible while we were there.
We cleaned out all the empty canning jars to pass on to canning households. Mom said her canning days are finished.
Also, I think it depends on where you are and what you are looking for but canning supplies have been scarce this year. Mom had an unopened box of wide mouth lids. GOLD!
This cat always looks like it wants to kill you. He was stalking birds in the garden and I scared them away. He apparently thought this meant I was too stupid to hunt birds for myself and on two separate occasions he very helpfully brought me a live bird still flapping in his jaws while he meowed begging to be let in.
I can’t tell whether as I get older I am more in tune to life’s various b.s. or if life is getting more b.s. as time goes by.
We get our office supplies from a particular company we do business with. I am being intentionally vague.
Office supplies are the biggest crock. Back in the day I would buy office supplies from a big box store.
The mark-up for buying supplies from a company like we do is ridiculous. But these days I don’t drive to work and in particular I have no way to get a heavy box of paper up to the office. We hardly use any office supplies except for paper.
I usually buy 2 boxes at a time and just opened the second box from our last purchase. There was an entire ream of paper — with no wrapper. It was like it fell on the ground in a stampede and someone ran around and grabbed it all, piled it together, and shoved it in the box. Another ream was too damaged to use.
Not buying from them again.
I took the wildlife cam to Orleans. I moved it around each night. The first night I put it behind the trailer and got nothing.
The second night I put it in the meadow and I got these three barely-there clips.
See the fox?
How about now can you see the fox?
The following night I aimed it toward the trail that goes along the meadow toward the river. Nothing.
Then I had the bright idea to mount it on a sawhorse and I had it positioned much better to catch any animals headed to the river. But I forgot to turn it on.
Here’s a glimpse of a deer from night 2. You can barely see it on a bigger screen. It’s just faint blur here.
Back in 2006, the first time I posted every day in November, I posted the Hot Cocoa Ceremony.
I still do this, more or less. Hot chocolate and homemade apple pie are my 2 favorite foods. If it’s cool and gloomy even in August I will make this.
I no longer use a standing blender, I use a stick blender but I mix it in a container. I tried one time to blend it in the cup and it did not go well. Don’t bother trying yourself.
I never add cayenne or vanilla.
During the Covid I came perilously close to running out of cocoa so next time I saw it at the grocery store I grabbed two kinds. My recollection was that the Dutch process was better.
With the two above choices the Hershey’s is miles better.
How did the pioneers keep their squash from getting bloopy? I followed all the steps for keeping squash and I keep finding mold spots. I already processed some of the smaller ones. Now this guy.
The big red kuri is looking a little spotty, too.
I’m roasting them and putting them in the freezer so it’s not the end of the world but it wasn’t a project I had on my list for this weekend.
I don’t love Halloween and I’m glad families are keeping safe but I was a little heartbroken. For the first time in 20 years we didn’t have one single trick-or-treater. The candy is hidden in a secret spot.
I gave myself an easy goal — I’m going to try for 25K on a new project. Here we are after day one:
1050 / 25000 words. 4% done!
Before the freeze.
Yesterday I inadvertently answered a spam call on my cellphone. In the last 24 hours I have gotten 15 more spam calls — all spoofed with different numbers. I’m using an old phone so I don’t have access to all the latest spam blockers but I installed something yesterday. I also kept my phone in airplane mode for long parts of the day.
What an aggravating pain.
After the freeze.
In 2006 I joined the first National Blog Posting Month “NaBlo” and almost every year since then I have posted every day in November. Sometimes it’s just photos or a quick quip. I also usually do a modified version of National Novel Writing Month. I would love to do something but I’m still in a slump and I don’t want to stress myself out making myself write something when I’m feeling so unraveled.
I’ll think about it and maybe make a simple goal.
I put the bucket away and moved the camera closer to the house. I figured I would see much. I was wrong.
My computer situation has become a big enough pain in the butt that I bought a new computer. Normally I would pick up my computer at the Apple Store but there is no Apple Store downtown right now. When I purchased it, it was supposed to be delivered next month.
Then I received notice it would be delivered on the one day neither of us would be available to be here.
This is the flower area. It still looks pretty good.
My notice said I could click to make adjustments to my delivery. I clicked and was sent to a page that confirmed, yes, I was scheduled for a delivery and if I need to make adjustments, I should enter my numbers and click here. I entered and clicked and was sent to a page that said, yes, deliveries are a thing that happen and to click here for more information about my delivery. It sent me back where I started.
I had to phone.
I picked every tomato I thought had a chance of turning red. Also: oh my, that window. It seems like everything is extra gross since the smoke.
If you’ve called any customer service line recently, you already know that a robot makes you talk to it and says it can understand full sentences and then it understands nothing and just gives you information that you already have. Once I got through to a person, TylerJustin he said I really needed to talk to UPS because it was in delivery mode now.
I talked to the robot at UPS who was convinced I needed a pick up and no matter what I did, she tried to get my address so she could schedule the pick up. I yelled at her until she reluctantly sent me to a real person. Oh, but my computer is coming from overseas, did I want to be transferred to the international UPS customer service?
Why the hell not?
Here’s what happens if you empty an old envelope of “assorted squash” into your garden and rake it around.
That person helpfully let me reschedule gave me a 13 digit case number.
Two minutes after we finished my cellphone rang and local UPS told me that they couldn’t really reschedule but we could leave a note on the door to tell the UPS driver not to leave it if we weren’t there.
Maybe this could work. But also, maybe not. I don’t trust anyone to do anything right in 2020.
We talked some more and we were able to arrange for the computer to be held and we will pick it up.
I would end on a triumphant note but let’s see if this all goes to plan first. I will report again in a week or two.
