I've been busy...

Last night I sent my grma (that's how she spells it!) a text. Just writing that was wierd. My grma does indeed know how to text. I can thank my teenage cousins for that development. Anywho, all it said was "I've been busy..."

Oh, and it contained this picture:

From the left: pickles, strawberry jam, peach slices, strawberry-rhubarb sauce, blueberry jam.
Yup. I've entered the world of canning. It's actually kind of fun. As long as you don't mind standing in the kitchen with large pots of boiling water and cooking foodstuffs. Since I don't own a pressure canner, I've only been doing foods with enough acidity to preserve safely in a water bath. I'm kind of sad that I didn't start this sooner- when berries were in season. But as we enter fall, pears and apples will be abundant at the farmer's market. (That's where most of the produce originated, except for the peaches, they came from the nearest chain supermarket, but as peaches don't grow well in Minnesota you can't blame me for not buying local.)

And in the background is my birthday present to myself. A mixer. A five-quart bowl, assembled in Ohio, KitchenAid Artisan series mixer. In willow blue. :)

As I hauled it into the kitchen, I joked with my brother that I no longer needed to get married. I mean the whole point of marriage is registering for gifts, right? And as I now own the small kitchen appliance most requested by future brides, (according to Macy's anyway) what other reason would compel me to get married?

It's gotten quite a bit of use already, banana bread, zucchini bread, rhubarb spice cake... Wait until it's cool enough to bake cookies, or bread. I've been told that the dough hook does really well with kneading yeast doughs...

This might explain why I haven't accomplished much in the needlecraft department recently. Hmmm...