Saturday, September 18, 2010

Food Storage is fun

This summer started with a craft night with my friend where I canned yellow beets and she cut out her quilt. However, my friend wha so fascinated with canning, that she went out the next day and bought 20 lbs of peaches. After that, we bought pickling cucumbers and tried to make cucumbers. Well, by now my canning genes werr in full gear so we went to Yakima to get some cheap produce for canning. Here are the results.


30 lbs of pears.

60 lbs canning tomatoes

green beans, beets, heirloom tomatoes, peaches, apples, and purple peppers. I froze the peaches for later, ate the heirloom tomatoes, apples, and purple peppers, and canned the beets and green beans.


My first night, I canned 12 pints of tomato wedges.


Steve wanted to do the dilled green beans, we got 4 pints.


Steve also made pear halves when I needed a night off.
Other food not pictured include 1 pint pear butter, 6 pints smooth basil marinary sauce, 6 pints chunky marinara sauce, 9 pints of salsa, and 3 pints of baby beets. I am so tired of canning, but it didn't stop me from experimenting with different flavors of gnocchi last night. A friend of mine came over and we made sweet potato sage gnocchi, sun-dried tomato basil garlic gnocchi, and rosemary black pepper gnocchi. All gnocchi is sitting in my freezer waiting for a night when I don't feel like cooking.

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

New York, I love you

Right now, my brother and sister-in-law are enjoying New York. It makes me long for the wonderful city. Steve and I were able to go in June on an adult only vacation while Steve's sister watched Miles (thanks Jennifer). Here are a sampling of some of our adventures.


The first night, we went to Bouchon Bakery to get sandwiches and cookies and then we took them to Central Park to eat and people watch. We each got a macaron even though I didn't have high hopes because nothing compares to the ones in Paris. Holy cow! These were just like Paris, so delicious.
As the sun set in Central Park, fireflies came out. I never see fireflies where I live so I found it absolutely magical as if I were a princess in wonderland.


Here is a drinking fountain in Hi Line park. It is a park built on an old elevated train line. It was so cool. I now recommend it to everyone who goes to New York because you just don't expect an elevated park.

More Hi Line. Don't you love how they incorporated the old rail lines?


I thought these chairs were really cool. They are actually on wheels on the old rail line so you can move them.



Okay. To beat the heat (it was really hot), we went to the Museum of Natural History. Amazingly, we got there an hour before the museum closed so we got in for free (I'm all about the deal). Anyway, dinosaurs are pretty awesome.

Starbucks Passion Iced Tea. The drink that made the heat bearable. It was the official sponsor of this vacation.


So we went to Brooklyn to go to the botanical garden and I think we walked about 10 miles along the perimeter of the park before we found an entrance. It got to the point that we started taking pictures from the outside in case we never made it. Did I mention it was hot? We get a little dramatic when we are hot.


We made it!!! Here we are inside the Brooklyn Botanical Garden

Some of you may know that I am kind of obsessed with the little walking guys that show up in intersections to tell you its okay to cross. This obsession began when we went to Vancouver, Canada and I realized they had different walking guy symbols. When we found this construction fencing showing all the different types of walking guys, I felt like I was in heaven. Of course we had to take a few pictures. Here, Steve is posing with Hamburg as that is where he went on his mission.


I chose to hold hands with the walking man from Nice. Even though I have bad memories of visiting Nice, France (horrible food poisoning while pregnant that came on Saturday night after everything had closed, oh and by the way, nothing is open on Sunday), I loved that the walking man is wearing a hat and is walking in a cross walk.