http://knit.jsminn.com/ en-us Nucleus CMS v3.32 � Weblog http://backend.userland.com/rss http://knit.jsminn.com//nucleus/nucleus2.gif http://knit.jsminn.com/ http://knit.jsminn.com/index.php?itemid=468 On Sunday, I was teaching my husband how to bottle the tomatoes. It went well. We picked the celebrity and roma tomatoes from the vine and immediately prepared them for canning. We got 4 quarts of canned tomatoes from this batch.



Two:
I have shipped these to the customer:


The customer loved them and put in another order of 8 small fitteds and 12 large fitteds.

Three:
Finished the rainbow baby blanket:


Time to start another baby project.]]> General http://knit.jsminn.com/index.php?itemid=468 Tue, 10 Aug 2010 10:13:56 -0400 http://knit.jsminn.com/index.php?itemid=466

Tonight's harvest.

There are a few more green peppers ripening, too. Fajitas? Yes!

Yesterday, Sarah and I picked yarns for our baby blanket. She picked rainbow colors. I started crocheting the blanket last night and so far, this is what I got:



Why don't I crochet more? It's SO quick!]]> General http://knit.jsminn.com/index.php?itemid=466 Tue, 3 Aug 2010 20:16:58 -0400 http://knit.jsminn.com/index.php?itemid=464 Dexter Blueberry Farm again today to pick our first batch of blueberries for this year. It's at $1.60 per pound this year. There is a lot out there begging to be picked. If you live in the area, we strongly recommend this farm for blueberries picking. It's huge and clean. We picked enough to make a couple of batches of jam, a few blueberry pies, miscellaneous cooking and baking, and for munching.

I have washed and dried them. I have one blueberry pie cooling on the counter, a couple of bags of pie filling measured and in the freezer, a couple of bags for miscellaneous use in the freezer, a batch of jam already in their half pint jars, sealed and cooling and another batch of jam cooking on the stove. I put some berries in a container in the fridge for munching.


A batch of jam cooking.

This is the blueberry jam without pectin recipe that I used last year. We really liked it, so I made it again for this year's reserve.


The first batch sealed and cooling.

Ah... I just heard the first loud ping from the jars. Sweet. Oh..there goes another!]]> Homemade Food http://knit.jsminn.com/index.php?itemid=464 Sat, 31 Jul 2010 20:37:03 -0400 http://knit.jsminn.com/index.php?itemid=462
We also have a lot of grape tomatoes ripening. The celebrity tomatoes are growing like granny smith apples or golden deilicious apples sizes. They're huge.

We have to thank the lady who lived here about 2-3 decades ago. She worked the soil well. We haven't fertilized nor spray anything on these plants. It's all in the soil.









Other than gardening, I have been sloooowwwwwly working on the diapers orders that I have. Received another sizeable order since last week. I'll be mailing these out tomorrow so that'd make room for the new order.



For this order, the customer sent in the fabrics and 5 diaper cut outs that she had. She asked me to sew them for her. :)]]> General http://knit.jsminn.com/index.php?itemid=462 Fri, 30 Jul 2010 14:04:36 -0400 http://knit.jsminn.com/index.php?itemid=460
One thing stuck out to me.

Raspberries cordial.

For one thing, raspberry is one of my favorite fruit. I also love cordials. We always have orange cordial when I was growing up.

So it got me to wondering what a raspberry cordial would taste like.

I googled (what a wonderful invention it is!) Raspberries Cordial. Lo and behold, it pulled a LOT of Anne of Green Gables Raspberries Cordial recipes.

We have one bag of frozen raspberries left from last year's season. It turned out to be the right amount needed for the recipe I was using.

1.25 lbs of raspberries, unfrozen
1 and 1/4 cup sugar
4 cups boiling water
2 lemons for juice

Boil the berries and sugar together. Mash the berries. Once the mixture is boiling and is watery, strained the mixture to get rid of seeds. Add boiling water and juice of 2 lemons to the mixture. Stir and put in the refrigerator to cool. It should be good to drink after a couple of hours.

It smells good. It looks good. I guess we'll have to wait and see what it would taste like.

Of course now we don't have anymore frozen raspberries. We picked enough last year for a year's supply of jam (stil have one jar left), muffins, smoothies, and miscellaneous stuff. I was hoping that the amount we picked would be enough to last a year and it did. The raspberry season started last week at the farm close to where we live. It's perfect timing.

We did go out this morning and picked only a couple of quarts. There's plenty of reds but plenty more of white berries on the vines. We are planning on going back next weekend and pick for our yearly supply.

We'll do the same with blueberries too. I have a half bag left in the freezer. We'll pick to stock next weekend, too.]]> Homemade Food http://knit.jsminn.com/index.php?itemid=460 Sun, 25 Jul 2010 17:11:37 -0400 http://knit.jsminn.com/index.php?itemid=458
A few more days and I'll be in second trimester.

I have been slowing down since finding out in May. Which is one reason why this blog rarely gets an update regularly during the past month or so.

I did what is necessary in the garden. That's it. I am still sewing but only sewing those custom orders. I haven't sewn any extra.

I very much want to make a couple of dresses for my daughter. I have the fabric. Just trying to squeeze out the energy to do is a bit beyond me at the moment. However, the fatigue phase seems to be passing by. I am slowly getting back more energy. So maybe the dresses project is not yet a loss cause.

I went out to the garden while waiting for the grill to heat up tonight. The beans are coming in heavily. I picked a couple of handfuls, washed, dried and put them in the freezer. In two to three days, I should be able to pick the rest to fill a big bowl.

Sarah has a couple of cucumbers ripe enough for picking. A couple of eggplants have blooms. A few zucchini buds, a few more cucumber buds.

Now, the tomatoes.

I guess the new strips aren't daunting to the plants. They're growing taller and taller. The stems are laden with fruit. A lot of fruit. Yes! I will have lots of tomatoes to make sauce with later in the season.

I picked a cucumber and a handful of grape tomatoes for tonight's salad.]]> General http://knit.jsminn.com/index.php?itemid=458 Sat, 17 Jul 2010 19:24:50 -0400 http://knit.jsminn.com/index.php?itemid=456
We had the kids picked a few red roma tomatoes today:


I grilled most of them for dinner tonight. Yummy!

We worked in the garden a bit more today. Just weeding, tying up tomato plants' stems so they are off the ground. It looks like there will be a lot of tomatoes ripening soon. We have a decent size cucumber growing right now. I'll pick it in a couple of days. Sarah has two cucumbers growing on her plant. She's stoked about it.

These pictures were taken this afternoon.
]]> Gardening http://knit.jsminn.com/index.php?itemid=456 Sat, 10 Jul 2010 20:41:42 -0400 http://knit.jsminn.com/index.php?itemid=454
Now, it's really hot and humid today. It really makes it hard for the heavy whipping cream frosting to stay stiff! I pretty much just slapped the frosting on the cake really quickly, wrote happy birthday, made a couple of cars and put the cake in the fridge. Just so the frosting wouldn't melt off the cake. :D



It's orange cake. The frosting is just whipped cream frosting (3 cups heavy whipping cream, 1 tablespoon sugar, half a pack of instant vanilla pudding mix). Not too sweet. Which is good. This is our favorite kind of cake frosting. ]]> Homemade Food http://knit.jsminn.com/index.php?itemid=454 Wed, 7 Jul 2010 10:21:20 -0400 http://knit.jsminn.com/index.php?itemid=452 Joy the Baker. The recipe is for two crusty brown loaves.

It is incredibly easy and only needs 4 ingredients; water, flour, salt and yeast. That's it.


Dough ready to be set aside for rising.


Waiting for the oven to be ready for baking.


All ready, piping hot.


We sliced one loaf almost immediately. It's so good!

That loaf is already gone.

I never used specifically labeled "Bread Flour" before but this time I did. It made a world of difference. It is worth it to spend $2 more per sack of flour just to have good bread at home.]]> General http://knit.jsminn.com/index.php?itemid=452 Mon, 5 Jul 2010 18:21:17 -0400 http://knit.jsminn.com/index.php?itemid=450
At the moment, I have two orders of 15 diapers (diapers and covers) each.

It's also summer. My daughter is out of school at the moment. So, the kids takes presidence over anything else.

The garden is a bit neglected but it is growing. We harvested a few tomatoes already. We haven't been weeding as much as we should. It's a busy season at work for husband and myself. I guess that's what we will do this weekend. Weeding and weeding.

]]> General http://knit.jsminn.com/index.php?itemid=450 Fri, 2 Jul 2010 10:59:09 -0400