A work day at home.....

I did what I said and stayed home and worked today. My day started in the garden where it was wet and muddy after our gully-washer yesterday. With the mud on my hands and swatting at mosquitoes, I was quite a sight by the time I came in. Yesterday was rainy most of the day but about 5:00 it poured and these strange clouds rolled in from 2 different directions. It was pretty scary for awhile but apparently, was just a cold front coming in. Weird!!!!

This was my harvest from this morning. The green beans are cooking right now and tomorrow I'm going to make the pepper relish that was posted http://mennonitegirlscancook.blogspot.com/ . We'll see what happens. I'm thinking the relish would be great on brown beans and cornbread.

Tomorrow I'm taking time off to go watch the g'kids play tennis. They're all taking lessons and tomorrow is there last one until after school starts. Can't believe it's almost that time and all 3 kids will be in school all day. Time flies!!!!

Jellymaking......

Judy made this black bean certerpiece for her birthday party on my backporch.

What a treat this winter to open this up and spread on french toast or a biscuit.

The last few weeks I've been checking out recipes for jelly. I've always just used the old standard Sure jell which is really good but only makes about 3 pints at a time. My thoughts were always that you couldn't mess with a jelly/jam recipe -- it was one that had to be exact. Apparently, not so.

After studying the way Annaliese http://mennonitegirlscancook.blogspot.com/ made her jelly and jams, I contacted her and she sent me very helpful advice. She just says put in this much fruit, this much sugar & this much pectin and see how you like it. She also makes large batches and keeps them in the freezer. Apparently, it stays so much fresher. I've always left mine out because it's sealed and it looks good. Her sealing method is to sanitize the bottles in the oven while you're mixing it up & then just pour the hot liquid into the hot jars, put the lid on and listen for that lovely little "pop".

I ended up with 6 jars and they look beautiful and the consistency looks perfect. Thanks Annaliese for your help. Can't wait for the peaches to come in.

Don't forget Leola's tag sale on Saturday morning if you're anywhere near Ozark. There will be lots of treasures. We're opening at 8:oo on the parking lot before it gets hot.