Our kitties

We went to South Mountain Creamery to feed the baby calves and get icecream. It is a good outing but the baby calves made me sad in their little cages. The kids loved it though and the ice cream is fantastic- try the coconut. There was a "Free Kittens" sign posted with 2 little orange kitties (a brother and a sister) and we told them we'd like to 'look at them.' The lady came down in her little golf cart with a very wiggly tote bag. These kittys were so cute we fell in love. I have never been a pet person, I really do hate dogs and cats (other people's cats, I guess) but these kitties are fun and add a lot to our house. Nick was at scout camp and I couldn't reach him on the phone so I just made an executive decision and we took them home. They are named Mandy (the girl, white nose and lighter) and Dipper (brown nose, more bold stripes) So far these 'free' cats have cost me over $1000 at the vet for shots and meds to try to cure Dipper's sneezing.

Fall bucket list: 4. make jam (done 9/25) 8. Zoe/Aaron to pick apples (done 9/25) 17. can something (apples, tomatoes, pear jam 9/25) Ok, so I thought I'd go for it and try canning. I attended the church emergency preparedness fair last spring and went to a class about it. It looks tricky to me with the special tools like a lifter and funnel and then that huge pot I was putting off buying because I don't want to try to figure out where to store it. I went to Walmart and spent $60 bucks on the big pan, rack, pectin, jars, citric acid. I took my assistants Zoe and Aaron to Rock Hill Orchard where we picked apples. It was a gorgeous fall day and the kids were happy to be wandering around eating apples and occasionally putting them in the bag. The price was $1.09 a pound and we ended up with 60 POUNDS. Yikes! In the market they had some seconds on tomatoes that were marked down so I snagged those, also. And some pears because I wanted to try a recipe I found online. So! Here is what I learned: *It is easier than you think. *It takes forever for a big pot of water to boil but not as long as it takes the pears to cook. *You can throw apples in your crockpot without peeling them and in the morning use your immersion blender to smoosh them all up and voila! applesauce. *I like the pint jars better than the quart jars (it is hard to get the water deep enough to cover them and you feel more productive because you end up with lots of littler jars rather than one big one) *popping sounds while the jars are cooling is a GOOD thing I canned: Vanilla Pear Jam (YUMMY but it didn't jel up- guess it is not jam so much as ice cream topping or pie filling) Apples Tomatoes Applesauce (fill crock pot 3/4 full with apples that are quartered and cored (I left peels on) add 1/2 cup sugar cook overnight use immersion blender to mix it all up