Fall Bucket List 19. try new soup recipes (ongoing) 21. learn to cook indian food (ongoing)

I notice a pattern for me. Step One- pick a goal Step Two- buy a lot of stuff for it Step Three- try it once or twice Step Four- pick a new goal So, I've been trying to cook indian food. I bought the book Indian Crockpot Cookbook and a fancy spice holder for all my indian spices. But it does have a few cute spoons but I don't know what measurements they are so I still end up getting out my plastic measuring spoons. So far none of the recipes are worth posting- mostly too spicy for me and if I try to tone it down they are too bland. My family is less than thrilled about all the lentils so my neighbors have been helping with leftovers and I still throw away about 50 percent of it. I think I need to switch gears and try some other recipes from the interwebs. Also, much smaller quantities until they are tried and true. As far as soup, at a thrift store I found a copy of Brother Vincent's Year of Monastary Soups. Most the recipes have been hits. However, I absolutely can not follow a recipe. I have good intentions but then I start throwing in extra stuff. Also, my foodie sister in law laughs at me because I substitute like crazy.. like I don't have an egg so I use applesauce. Or I don't have cream so I use milk. Last night. It was Tomato Florentine Soup from Brother Victor's book. I'm not going to post the original recipe because I made so many substitutions, but I thought the result was pretty surprisingly good. One out of Four kids ate it, so not a good family meal but it was low cal and vegan so that's all good. Emily's garden tomato soup I used the tomatoes I scored at the farmers market. First I threw them in a pot of boiling water for a minute and then took the peels off. Put them in a pot with a cut up onion, 2 bullion cubes and 4 cups of water. Added a bay leaf, a few cut up basil leaves,and a shake of thyme. Cook for 30-40 minutes. Remove bay leaf. Add greens (I used a few handfuls of frozen kale) and then I threw in some leftover rice. Cook 10 more minutes. (I'm not sure why all my posts are all one big paragraph.. that isn't how it looks when I type it out. Weird)

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