Good Monday Morning!  It is an almost perfect day.  It would be perfect if I were having a day off but that is not to be.

What have you been up to?  As for us, we had a lovely lovely weekend.  It started on Friday with a very full, busy day for me at work.  I had a very large (30 people) Handle with Care group.  It was the last one for the year and since it's mandatory, all the folks who skipped out during the year showed up.  Clarence and I did the take down three times and my muscles felt it by the end of the day.

I had time to scarf down some lunch and then it was off to a Sanctuary training for an hour and a half.  I like the concept of taking care of ourselves as well as our consumers.  It was an interesting training on being mindful of positive things in the environment.

I got home from work with enough time to change my shirt (the training makes me a bit sweaty) and pick up Elanor to go out to dinner for her 30th (oh my god, I have a 30 year old daughter!) birthday dinner. 

We got her a Galaxy tablet and then went to The British Chip Shop in Haddonfield.  We had a good dinner of pub sandwiches and El and Pk had pots of tea.  Kate made a cake and brought some balloons and it was really nice.  El had a good time.

Friday night I was exhausted and Saturday morning I woke up feeling groggy and disconnected.  I showered and did some laundry and putzed around while Pk watched some soccer.  He is really enjoying being able to see the games live.  And in HD, it's like seeing the folks in person.

We went grocery shopping later in the day and ended up forgetting several things (like tea bags.  Who forgets tea bags?) because it's a new store.  Today, we'll be going to the store on the way home to complete the shopping trip.

Sunday was pedicure/manicure time for me.  It feels soooooo good to sit in the comfy chair and soak your feet in a hot whirlpool bath.  I think that's my favorite part.  Pk decided to make sausage and he took over the kitchen chopping meat with the stick blender and making patties.  It was not as difficult as I thought since we didn't stuff it into casings.



Squishing the tomatos



He also pulled out the Squeezo.  This is what it looks like when it's put together (I pulled the photo off of a google search site so I apologize for the quality).  The last of the tomatos were harvested and put into the hopper and squished them down.  The beauty of this thing (which we have owned for about 25 years) is that it makes puree out of the innards and shunts the skin, seeds and anything else off to the side. The puree runs down the slide and right into a bowl or a plastic freezer bag.  You can see the skins falling into the bowl. 

It makes perfect tomato puree and if you let it sit in the refrigerator, the water will separate out and the tomato puree will be thicker.  We just put it into freezer bags and put it into the freezer for making sauce or soups later. 

We also got some absolutely wonderful beefstake style tomatos.  They have such intense tomato flavor.  This is what I miss most during the winter/fall months.  Tomatos bought in the store are just not the same. 

I still have some jars of pickles in the fridge.  I gave some to my brother and he texted me "holy crap! these are good pickles!" so I think he liked them.  We enjoyed the garden this year.  The weather was pretty good with lots of rain and warm temps so the plants set fruit and it grew prolifically.  We have the last of our cucumbers in the fridge and it will be time to strip the tomato plants of all the fruit left.  We didn't get to sit outside as much as we might have liked because all the wet weather brought lots of mosquitos but it was still a good summer.

And now we begin the slow inevitable slide toward the holidays.  Hallowe'en is in a month and then before we know it, Thanksgiving and Christmas will be upon us.  Now that Em's wedding is over, we have to go back to working on the house. (and thinking about Kate's day next October).

Does it feel like life is rushing by?