little house in Ohio.

I've been busy with what I like to think of as preserving our harvest this week. In reality, it is probably 25% our garden success, and 75% grocery store produce to supplement. Because what seems like an awful lot of peppers and tomatoes isn't really when you start cooking it down. :)

On Monday, I had the opportunity to work at home. I had beautiful visions of working all day in half hour increments and slowly cleaning my house and doing my freezer cooking. In reality, I spent my day here:

Yes, that is an enormous pile of laundry to be folded. No, I didn't even get to that. The state database that I use for work  is the bane of my existence, and usually keeps me from doing a long list of important things while I am at my desk at work. I wanted to see if working at home would help that problem by allowing me to just concentrate. Nope. It sucks anywhere I go. I think I should come to terms with my loathing of that particular system.

Anyway, I did manage to make this for dinner:





I am so proud of this pizza because it is so very whole: homemade rosemary crust (with rosemary from our garden), homemade pasta sauce (with half store bought and half garden tomatoes, and basil from our garden), and topped with fresh mozzarella, basil (garden), and cherry tomatoes (garden). It was so yummy!

The rest of the week was spent doing a little cleaning and cooking after work each day, except for a church meeting on Tuesday and coffee with a friend on Wednesday. I am almost finished working through the huge box of organic apples that the hubs brought home. I turned them into 5 quarts of sliced apples (ready to turn into apple pie filling this fall!) and 2 pints of apple butter. I have one more "layer" of apples from the box to go. Ideas????? Below are a couple of pictures of my canning success. I hope. We'll know for sure in a few months!

That was pretty much how my week went! I am finding out that preserving food  is an ongoing process! No end in sight!