It's A Good Thing

More beautiful fall weather – and we've had a busy couple of days. That's no excuse, I know, but I just couldn't get my mental focus into doing the blog yesterday – my apologies!

Miss Whirlwind's family birthday party is Saturday, so by yesterday morning I figured it was time for Grandma to get in gear and get her a card and gift! In years past, that would have been done weeks ahead of time. Not now – now that Granny's retired, she's taken that pressure off herself. So I should probably apologize here and now to my kids, their spouses, and others who normally get birthday greetings from me – someone could get missed now that I don't live by my calendar!! I still love you just as much, I'm just way more laid back than I used to be!

Yesterday afternoon we decided to check out the local food bank. We hadn't been for awhile – I think the last time we went down it had been canceled. Prior to that, it was a ridiculously hot day. The enclosed facility had very little air moving, and we stood in line more than an hour waiting our turn. Yesterday was much nicer – it was a last-minute delivery that we had been called about. So I don't think as many people as normal showed up – it was cooler, and they started running the line through at one......over an hour earlier than usual.

It's always an adventure to go down there and see what you end up with. We got home and started sorting things out and put them away. The one “surprise” was a case.....yes, indeedy, I said “case”.....of mashed potatoes. Inside the case are four large plastic bags of buttery mashed yukon gold potatoes. And I must say, they taste pretty good! They do, though, take up a lot of fridge space....and it's bringing on a challenge trying to figure out how to use them.

I washed up five pounds of small red potatoes and dug out a couple of suspect ones for the garbage. About five pounds of carrots went into the fridge, along with three large heads of broccoli, some yellow squash, two institutional-size clamshell containers of organic spring greens, six hospital-size individual containers of milk, a sugarfree cherry pie, a personal-size sugarfree apple pie. There are about a dozen tomatoes on the counter to finish ripening. Last night I also stemmed and sliced two large containers of strawberries and washed three containers of something I'd not seen before – tiny seedless concord grapes. They are SO good! We're just grabbing them by the handful out of the fridge. I set aside two bags of huge apples to deal with later.

I started today doing a job I hate – and doesn't everyone!!! - defrosting the freezer. It actually went faster than I anticipated. I was so glad. I started on the apples and put a dutch oven of chopped apples on the stove to cook down into applesauce. We enjoyed fresh steamed broccoli for lunch – to be honest, I enjoyed it a lot more than hubby did! But he did well by tasting it before he told me I could have the rest of it. I pulled something Mom used to make out of my memory banks that was a much bigger success......when we used to have leftover mashed potatoes, she would break a few eggs in them, scramble it up and cook it in the skillet. We had a little leftover corn in the fridge that I threw in as well. It tasted pretty good. I'm trying to decide if I could make some of that up, bake it in muffin tins, and freeze it – the potatoes just might hold up to that if I put in plenty of eggs, I could throw in some veggies and meat, and it would be good for hubby to grab and pop in the microwave for his snacks.

I blanched the rest of the broccoli this afternoon and put it in the freezer. The tomatoes aren't the prettiest or the best, but I think they would be fine for chopping up and freezing – they would work well for soup. It feels good to do this kind of kitchen work, but I will admit to being a bit tired.

But, I also have that good feeling that comes with freezing and canning food to take care of your family. As Martha Stewart would say, “It's a good thing!”