I'm Alive - I'm Alive

Yea - we're still here on the mountain in Tennessee.  I've just been lazy and haven't posted to our blog in quite sometime - as I've been reminded several times.  So Barb, this one's for you.

I stepped out onto our back porch a few days back to enjoy my morning cup of java and this is what met my eyes

That 2nd mountain range in the center of the pic is Kentucky, just about the Static area.  Temps have been cooling in the mornings but the ground temp is still warm so it produces a ground fog that slowly rises until the sun gets high enough to cause it to dissipate.  Kinda makes me feel like I'm above the clouds. Just thought I'd share.
I've been continuing to work on my 1989 Ford Bronco that we bought new back in 1988 for around $22K.  That was quite a chunk of change for a car back then but it's still going.  I had the engine overhauled around 188K miles and just recently had the original transmission rebuilt.  I'm now getting ready to put another rear end in it and with just a few more tweaks, she'll be really mechanically sound and reliable.  I'm gonna let Kristy, our daughter, use it as her vehicle til she is able to get her own.  The a/c doesn't work but that'll come later.  Right now we need a 2nd vehicle and this is it.

If you've followed previous seasons on this blog you will know that this time of year is canning season, and this year is no different.  It seems to be a frenzy of work for a couple of months when all the fruits and vegetables ripen.  We typically can tomatoes (lots and lots of tomatoes), green beans, corn, pickles (dill and sweet), beets (if we can find them) and some apples for pie filling and peaches.
So far this year we have canned 144 jars of stuff and that doesn't include the vegetables that we have frozen in vacuum packages.  That may sound like a lot be we give some of this away to our relatives  who live in Illinois and Florida and other friends and neighbors.  However, that's not to say we don't eat a lot of it either.  We use a lot of tomatoes for spaghetti sauce and salsa.

I'll list them from left top to right bottom.  Dill pickles - corn - whole tomatoes - green beans - sweet pickles, banana peppers and tomato sauce - tomato soup, vegetable soup, spaghetti sauce, apples and beets - spaghetti sauce and salsa - lastly peaches.


In addition to canning, Cathy does a lot of cooking and hates to use store-bought products, like ragu and such.  So she begins from scratch just like her Grandma did.  It takes all day to cook the whole tomatoes down into a sauce but boy does the house smell good.  Anyway, she uses a lot of spices when she cooks so she found a spice rack, which holds about half of her spices.

 





  She had mentioned that she needed another spice rack and would really like to have one to match what she already had.  I found one of her older scrub boards that had been broken and repurposed it for her.

Now she has enough storage space for her spices - for now that is.  So - that's it for my latest post and I sure hope I can do better in the future keeping our blog more current.  Til next time -----