Sunday, October 30, 2011. No in-town projects, but lots of out of the house (and in-house) projects. Same ole; same ole.
Monday, October 31, 2011 — HAPPY HALLOWEEN Off to town for a scholarship luncheon. We were each fed a baked potato (Yukon Gold) grown in one woman’s garden. She claimed the plants are special because they don’t come from “eyes on seed potatoes.” That’s not exactly true but these potatoes do have an interesting history.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yukon_Gold_potato
Their shallow eyes have a rosy pink coloration:
http://homecooking.about.com/od/foodhistory/a/yukongoldhistry.htm
So they say. We have not raised them and photos don’t show much. Let’s all buy a few and have a look.
The luncheon with the Yukon’s was a two-hostesses affair. There were many different toppings provided, and the table was lovely with orange and black plates and many decorations, and a little bag of candy corn for each person to take home. Pumpkin pie was for dessert. I went on to exercise class and then to visit our Geography department secretary (who was there when I arrived in 1988), and before she left, she had in 27 years of service ). She lives in one of the retirement centers where our music group plays. I took her picture with her cat and picked up a note she wrote for the memory book. I added it and the pictures to her page. We had a very nice visit.
Tuesday, Nov 1 — Not much today. I worked on the memory book; John worked outside, and I went for a massage, for my shoulder (and neck). It seems to be helping. I drank lots of water and was not in as much pain as two weeks ago.
Wednesday, Nov 2 –Today was a trip to town for playing music and eating at the food bank. We had Salisbury steak, milk gravy on it and on mashed potatoes, corn, cut raw carrots, and applesauce. John finished digging the ditch for the power cord to the cat house. It might rain or snow soon and an un-dug ditch in nasty weather is a thing to avoid.
I transposed the Marine’s Hymn today for our Clarinet player. We are practicing for Veteran’s Day performance coming up. I looked up Anchors Aweigh and also transposed it for her. (Sadly she missed our play date today; oh, well, it will be ready for her next week.)
There is a big old HOOT owl making noise in the woods north of us. Very loud. Always makes me worry about the cats outside. Well, the big old Hoot owl is very likely the smaller male (young or old ?) of a pair of Bub virginianus.
http://www.owlpages.com/owls.php?genus=Bubo&species=virginianus
I just put a blanket around my cold feet. Jeez, and I have heavy socks plus down booties. And the heat is up to 69 in the hallway. However, I’m sitting here in the recliner next to the cold window (patio). Temp now is 42; was only 55 today in town. Going to 30 tonight, and they are calling for snow in the morning. BAD—mentally we are not ready for cold – and some folks think the PNW will be colder than average for the next two weeks:
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/predictions/814day/814temp.new.gif
. . .while average for the next 3 months through the end of January. Are we to believe we will have early cold and then not colder than normal afterwards? That will be nice. One winter here it went to 17 below and did not get above zero for 3 weeks.
So back to goings on: When I got home, I cut up and cooked 12 tomatoes. John put them into two containers of 1.5 pounds each. Our tomato seed pack has paid for itself. Hurrah! Got yet another letter tonight for the memory book and have processed it, but not yet printed it.
Thursday. Nov 3 was John’s lucky day. He found his black plastic lens cover in the pasture, before being covered by dropping leaves, snow, or deer scat.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/36722129@N06/3474320972/
Well, you do know what snow and leaves look like! Next, he decided to clean up the freezer and other stuff from the garage to take to the dump (transfer station). He found the keys to his Subaru that have been lost for at least 6 months. They were in the freezer apparently having fallen from his upper shirt pocket while he was putting something down in the chest freezer. They say luck comes in 3s. At the dump, the guy next to him unloaded 7 pieces of unused plywood, each about 3’ by 4’. John asked if he could take it and the guy in charge said, “This is my first day and I really don’t know but go ahead and I will look the other way.” He wanted to go for 4 lucky things and buy a lotto ticket. He didn’t have time so we still are not rich. He did a lot while I was playing music–filled both tanks of the 1989 Ford truck, shopped at the grocery, taking advantage of a 12-hr. special sale. Nice that he bought some sirloin steaks for only $2.98/pound. And, he got some bananas for .38/pound that we intend to dry. Some say sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon. Sounds good. Dinner tonight was the steak (tougher than expected), baked potato, and tomatoes (they are thinning out). Fruitcake (frozen last December) with ice cream for dessert.
Friday, Nov 4 — Day that had much stuff happening at the house (yard) with John, and with Nancy in town. Nancy went to a potluck at the Adult Activity Center, stayed over and worked with a gal on a puzzle (only found 3 pieces to put in), and then we both went to afternoon exercise class. I had taken some of John’s homemade applesauce from the Rome apples so it is a lovely red color. The Center fixed a nice bunch of spaghetti with meat sauce, toasted garlic bread, and people brought some neat potluck stuff, including a wild rice/tomato/celery salad, a Waldorf salad, a casserole with carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, pearl onions, made with two soups (one a shrimp soup, which gave it some color), plate of red grapes, & cookies and ice cream for dessert. I missed the plate of veggies that came late with someone. For our dinner, John cooked chicken breasts, and I cut up a tomato to have with mine. It was neat that he put our Carpathian walnuts in brown sugar with our Acorn squash (bought; not grown in our garden). Getting the walnuts cured was a task. He has worked hard with them spread around the house in flat boxes, and turning them a couple times a day. Now we have to package them up for the freezer too. Perhaps we’ll figure out something neat to do with some of them — a praline candy type item maybe. We still have much fruit to dry.
Saturday. Nov 5 — Waked up to temps of 21… now at 12:30 p.m. it’s up to 42 and John went outside while the temps are bearable. He was going to do some inside work helping me on dehydrating bananas, but a friend sent a photo of rocks from one of her horseback rides with a “What’s this?” tag. He gathered some ideas and photo links from the ‘net’ and then wanted to go outside where the sun was shining. I will work on this blog and clean off the table, fill in my Absentee Voter’s Ballot, and wait for him to help with the drying. We now have an extra dehydrator given to us. It is older, square, with metal screen trays, but not the older high metal ones. This looks like a little microwave. I have never seen one like this.
John just came in after working for 2 hours picking up black walnuts that have fallen in our driveway and yard. They are too much trouble to try to keep, although he may pick out 50 of the largest to do something with later in the winter. Problem is having to open them with a hammer; they are not as easy as the English-type walnuts he has harvested this year. He wanted to get them off the ground so the Douglas squirrel will have to go elsewhere for food. It may be she/he has already left or been killed by the owl we’ve been hearing. We are thinking it has been two months since the critter was in the yard. Meanwhile something has been snacking on the pine nuts from the Ponderosas. Birds maybe? http://www.flickr.com/photos/44884897@N03/4448421360/
Hope your next week is wonderful.
Nancy & John
still on the Naneum Fan