Veggies Wherever You Look

Our lives this week have been dominated by processing vegetables from the gardens. We first canned 10 and ½ pints of Italian tomato sauce. The tomatoes kept coming and coming and coming. Then we knocked ourselves out on Thursday by cooking and canning 12 and ½ pints of Italian tomato sauce. We may be done with sauce now but the tomatoes keep coming. We’ll probably can tomatoes Sunday – a totally different canning process than sauce. We eat tomatoes at just about every meal except breakfast.

In the meantime I keep freezing beans and Friday, I froze more. We’re eating a lot of beans. Fortunately. I know a lot of ways to cook beans. Last night we went over to Stephanie ‘s house in town, as Tasha came down from Dartmouth and cooked a lovely supper. Her teaching schedule has made it almost impossible to get here this summer, and recently her cat Kitty Kitty was diagnosed with hyperthyroidism and had to go on meds every day.  I’ve had two cats that had that so told her what I have experienced with it.

Tonight, Gigi and Ralph come over for supper. At this point, I’m still figuring out what to make. We’ll serve out gravlax for an appetizer with Boursin. We make that regularly and freeze it in halves for company.

I’ve been working hard on the small changes to my book THE HOUR OF MY DEATH.  I hope to finish tomorrow so Dale can put in the poems I added and remove the ones I took out. I feel pretty good about it but have no idea what myi agent’s reaction will be. It’s not a long book this time. I cut a fair amount this time through, mostly repetitions or dull spot

We’re both suffering some from the poor air quality – unusual here—caused by forest fire smoke descending on us. Sometimes Woody or I can actually smell it.My head keeps getting stopped up and we’re both sneezing and coughing. We’re going into a dry spell here, which worries me as the Cape is so crowded and visitors just do not take care.

I watch some of the preseason games on local TV for the Pats and on NFL, selected games that interest me, like anything when I can actually watch the Lions. I got into a bad habit of watching cat and other animal videos when I’m exhausted instead of reading. I’m weaning myself from that. I did read my American archeology magazine that came this week, and that was fun. I always learn so much from it.

I spend a lot of my time processing vegetables. Woody spends time every day picking. I haven’t done much of that lately, as preparing or preserving the tomatoes or beans or peppers or Oriental eggplants uses up what time I had. Woody brought out  the dehydrator yesterday. We hadn’t had enough tomatoes for me to dry any for the last three years and I miss having them to add to sauces, pastas.  I usually give a jar of them to Dale and Stephen, who eats them like candy. 

I think I’ll make a pot roast for Ralph and Gigi as it’s cool today and serve tomato and fresh mozzarella slices – caprese salad.