Wow. Canning sure is tiring.LOL! Got the new replacement degydrator in and have been canning AND drying fruit! LMAO! Bacon, the cat is having claw issues with the couch and the couch won. Bacon is the Starved One my daughter nursed when she wandered into our house last fall and was nothing but bones. She's currently in my livingroom getting high on a catnip mousie, then she plays with the couch and gets her paws stuck. I don't know why cats always think theres something under the couch that only THEY can get to, LOL.

Today I have to harvest more apples, the last 3 peaches ( I found them hiding up high!) and a mess of pears. I REALLY have alot of pears this year. I've been telling Clover and Javi to come and get what they want, but they have been busy or unable to. Clover said they'd be over today, I told her not too late. One: you got to be able to SEE the fruit and can't if its too dark, Two: hubby wants to go to Harvey's cuz they have a band or DJ or something like that. Harvey is letting us in free cuz I gave him a deep tissue massage and used what I know to fix his back and shoulder.I wouldn't pay a $8.00 cover for a DJ anyways. Especially since I don't drink beer and that's all he serves besides chancey food. I say chancey, cuz he hires mostly relatives. And he has a few that eat off the salad prep bins, stick their fingers in the dressing ON THE CUSTOMERS PLATE to see if the dressing is okay andsome other things. I ordered a chicken fried steak once. He GRILLED the prepped item IN BUTTER on the flat grill. Talk about a soggy mess! Another time I ordered the Philly cheesesteak and it had bone and gristle all through it. I showed it to him by tapping the meat so he could hear the metal fork ringing and he offered to make me another one, I told Harvey, Why? If the whole prep is like this? No thanks, all that butter is making me quesy anyways. So no, unless its a burger, I won't eat there anymore. And I won't get the burger anyways cuz I can get a better one down the road at BK. Yep, had one of his neices bring two glasses of water to me and my daughter with her FINGERS in each glass and our plates stacked on her other arms. You know me...I looked at that girl and asked loudly, Do you mind getting us glasses of water that DON'T have your fingers in it?

WAHHH! Don't feel like picking fruit! LMAO! Gotta load the dehydrator! Must harvest, de-stem,peel, pre-treat, blanch, make splenda syrups and the process and can!!! Oh wait! I have a big thing of apple juice...I can save alot of time by just canning the pears cold in apple juice? Well, I want to make pear pie filling too though...hmm.

It's funny how I wait all year for the next wave of fruit, but when it comes to harvesting and storing and processing them, I complain about it and can't wait till I'm done! LMAO! But then again, the peaches are awesome as usual, the pears did exceptionally well this year. The yellow apples are a bit grumpy due to an invasion of aphids thi s year that was so bad that daily blasts of water did NOTHING and ladybugs were so gorged that they split the area in search of the diet section! So this year after leaf drop, I think I will  have to spray dormant oil for the first time ever. I'd rather it be organic, but hey, the poor trees are suffering! The red apple didn't have an aphid issue, just the goldens did, both front and back. My dad sent along a mess of nectarines from his yard, some cut up and frozen in bags ( they taste great, but have to be thawed out to use since they are frozen IN THEIR juice) and the texture is gnarly, well, squishy when thawed. So we use them for smoothies...a big batch. I think I will just process these like pie filling, I just don't have the freezer space right now.Still hinting to hubby about a small upright freezer, but I know we have to concentrate on Baby Girl's college right now, more than a freezer.

Today went and got a bunch more cases of canning jars, both quarts and pints. I still have plenty of peaches to can, a boat-load of pears, mine and dad's, and I haven't even started on the apples yet. I wonder if Clover will be using her crock pot the next few days? I need to make the apple and pear sauces first, THEN use the crockpots to cook down the fruit into apple and pear butters...although I use applesauces to make low calorie "ice creams" ( AWESOME STUFF!!!  )

No Cream Ice Cream Recipe

About a cup of any frozen fruit

1/2 banana or enough no sugar added applesauce to get the frozen fruit smooth

a packet of splenda (opt)

Whirl everything in a food processor or tough blender until smooth. Will be "frewsh ice cream soft" but useable right away, or you can freeze it for about half an hour for a firmer "ice cream". Great thing is that its FRUIT, counts as a fruit in most diets and tastes great!

I hope my replacement dehydrator comes in tomarrow! If it does, I know what I'll be doing with some of those overripe nectarines!! And the dented cans of pineapple! I REALLY need to re-organize the front area stoarge shelves in the garage...I'll need the space for all these canning projects, LMAO!

Cee came over and we cooked, canned, laughed our butts off and had a blast for two days and one night.Her hubby had a gig to play in Arizona, her son is off to boot camp and so it went. We set fire to the gas grill and after I put it out we decided to assemble this charcoal one my dad found on clearance for $10.00 and cooked tri-tips in the dark by lantern light, made potatoe salad and fresh corn and drank cheapo fruity wine.Wish S could have been there...its been awhile...sigh...Clover couldn;t make it cuz she said Javi was feeling under teh wweather. So we had tons of food left over.

Cee knows spees gross me out to no end, so she hit the skylight web fest with the webster for me. ( THANKS CEE!!!)

I downloaded a bunch of drivers and updates for her computer onto disks for her, and we traded recipes. I scanned mine for her, and scanned hers into my hard drive, LOL! The next day we went to the Turkish festival and wandered the Cannery, went back and made turkey lasgna and peach cobbler before she went home.

All in all, a nice time had by all!

I'm starting to get sick of looking at/dealing with peaches right now, but I know I'll like them again when I want to make a pie or have a pc of toast! LOL! Put up 6 qts yesterday and another 3 qts and additional 2 pints today. The next load isn't quite ripe enough to can yet, so I have them laid out on a cookie sheet on the front kitchen patio along with a basket of pears and one lonely tomato. I SHOULD be picking pears right now, so they'll be ripe at least by Friday, but I surely don't want to do it...sigh. Oh well! Assembled the patio buffet table hubby picked up last night at Home Depot. It's nicer than I thought! And made the turkey sloppy joes, and have everything ready for the velveeta shells and cheese ( homemade kind, not boxed one) Make it like Grandmother used to is a MUST! LOL! Hope my replacement dehydrator comes in by Friday so Cee can check it out. She's the canning guru, me I'm the dehydrator guru, LOL. Man, I used to dry all KINDS of stuff. Not just my herbs and flowers or even jerky, but canned and fresh fruits, homemade leathers for the boys, cubed meats and veggies that I'd vacuuum seal into little packs and when I took the boys hiking or camping ( which we did alot of back then) I'd have my handheld water purifier pump and a "camp shower" type bag that I'd carry on the outside of my pack so I'd have hot water to start the soups or stews by the time we reached wherever it was we were going. Salmon fishing season was a blast with salmon jerky. With 3 apple trees, I had tons of dried apples for dried apple pie ( like the pioneers used to make) pemmican (using the tart apples), apple chips, apple leather, apple cubes ( to add to oatmeals and granolas), YEP! Apples up the whazoo! Dehydrated apple butter is actually a tasty fruit leather! Roll them in plastic wrap and it won't get stuck to itself! My herbs kept their bright colors better, of yeah! Well, the apples out front have already been mostly raided by my thieving neighbor hood peeps...the lower branches at least. I'll have to harvest the rest by ladder, the took everything else in the last few days. At least they don't know about the other trees in back, or else I bet SOMEone would be jumping my fence at night to try and steal all the fruit. I really dislkie this mentality some of my neighbors have, of whoever gets its first regardless of who owns the property or tree. Wonder if I can get Cee to give me a hand picking pears? Probably. All I have to do is ask, she's a very nice person.

Well all the cans have sealed properly, so after they cool down more, I'll remove the rings, wipe them down better, label the lids and put them up. And start the shells and cheese...yum! I probably shouldn't enjoy that so much, which is why I make it only occassionally. It ought to be a seperate food group!

My kitchen floor is very stickey at random areas due to me running around and canning, LOL! Thank goodness for Swiffer! Although I should probably do it right with the floor scrubber thingy...I'm just very tired of standing today.Once you start canning stuff, you can't walk away or sit, there's too much that needs to be monitored, and you usually have every burner you own going on at once. But I really like this new steam canner. It takes SOOOO much less water and time to heat up than a regular water bath canner! And pressure cookers scare me to death. I've seen two people badly burned with pressure cookers already. I don't know how to use them and am happy with that. I'd rather dry my ingredients for beef stew than can them anyways, or heck, go to the store and buy a can if I don't feel like making it from scratch! Oh, those crock pot season packets are great, by the way!

Well, so far, early this morning ( very early) I started coughing, and woke up hubby, who inquired if I was okay or was I getting his flu? What a sweet reaction that was...awww! Anyways, no flu...I rolled over, apparently Bailey the Cat had recently left that spot and had left behind a ball or puff of hair, which I had inhaled partially! Hack! Cough! Talk about coughing up a hairball!! LMAO!

   The two neighbor kids across the street from me cleared off every peach their folks had on a small tree in their front yard that they could reach and launched them in the street, there was maybe a hundred green fruit out there. IF and a BIG IF, mom notices, she'll be upset. But that mama doesn't notice a whole lot. Those kids take off all the time, play in the street and such. She or the dad will eventually come out screaming for their kids, or if I'm working out front, ask me if I've seen them. Last year the boy ( the eldest) took his sister and walked her into the street and told her to stay there, so she did, in her pink footie jammies. Me, and two other women ran out to grab that chiold before the cars killed her. I went to get the mom and the boy said she was sleeping. When I yelled for her, it was confirmed when she yelled back, " Shut up! I'm trying to sleep!" So I reported her. They left for a while, but are back in the US now and now she has a newborn to add to her list of kids she doesn't watch...sigh. Today someone from the apts down the street shoved their shopping cart into my yard, all the way up to my mugwort! They bring carts from the store, but are too lazy to return them, so I just shove the blasted carts back to the apt complex by the managers office. He asked me once why, I told him it was from one of his tenants who'd shoved the thing (last time) into my car. People need to learn to put things back, I swear.

Got a mess of Splenda canning recipes for pears, peaches  and apples this morning! So when I got to the commissary on Sunday, I plan to get a couple of things I need to process a few different style recipes, that, and I need more jars, LOL!

My daughter starts college in a few weeks, we need to get her the stuff she needs for her dorm too. Her cats are gonna go bonks again with her gone.

Gave a bag of assorted fruit to Clover today when she came to borrow my big liquid cooler for her nephews party, but forgot to give her the forms Javi wanted me to print for him.

Oh the peaches are sweet this year, but they usually are. I like to say that to the Peach Tree sort of an appreciation thing. The downside is that peach branchlettes are so very brittle and sometimes they break when I try to twist the fruit off rather than pull it. And the Green Barlett is doing so very well this year! The red Barlett is not as well producing as the green this year, but that's fine too. No one can be perfect all the time! The Red Delish is starting to get color, but not as much size as when I thinned them last time. It's a naturally occurring "spur" tree, which means it produces more fruit per foot than an average apple tree and still maintain size and quality, so when I thin the fruit, they get huge, usually. So far, not yet. I think the trees are comfused from all the smoke in the air this year, the strong cold winds and that we only had a week of hot weather. That one week was heck on the veggies at high noon ( they needed a quick water spritz) but other than that all the plants and trees grew leaps and bounds in that week. Definitely must spray some dormant oil or something on the trees after leaf fall because this year I had a very very bad case of aphids. Poor trees are still dropping sugared leaves all over! I think that has something to do with it as well.

Don't you love summer fruit? The apple tree out front USED to be a cherry tree. Cherries need a pollinator, so someone grafted the cherry onto a self pollinating apple, I guess. One year hubby tried to help by pruning ( it made the tree split, but I got her to recover) but after recovery, she was a full apple, LOL. Yep, got two whole cherries off of her before she reverted, LOL!

The roma tomatoes are growing nicely, but still very green, the cherries are so tiny and cute, also still green, the patio giant has two more tomatoes that are turning red right now, the first of her fruit went to the Goddess as an offering.

Wonder how tiny the corn will be? I must photgraph it when its ready. Maybe Barbie sized? LOL