Divide and Conquer

View of the sky when I came out for my morning run

This morning I decided to run to the end of Sunset Drive, which is 2.3 miles according to Google maps.  I was hoping to run the whole way there and back (total of 4.6 miles) but have never run that far without a walking break before.  I told myself that I'd at least run the first half and then could walk back if needed, which would still be a great workout.

Here's the view from the end of Sunset Drive

I stopped at the above vantage point to take this picture and check my pace (between 8.5 and 9-minute mile).  Then I ran the whole way back as well!  It felt great.

This morning I had special time with Hannah while Charles and Sophie enjoyed a movie morning for kids that the local cinema does during the summertime.  They went to see the Smurfs, but Hannah really wasn't interested in going.

Charles and Sophie on their way out to the movies

Sophie enjoyed the movie and told me that they sang a lot.  I asked her if she liked the songs and she said, "They sang the SAME song."  Having grown up watching (and loving) the Smurfs, I began to sang for her... la la la la la la, la la la la la (can you hear it in your head?) and asked her if that was the song they kept singing.  "YES!" she shouted, as she plugged her ears.  I think maybe she's not a fan of that song!

Showing me her adorable pigtails, with a side of big cheesy grin

Hannah and I returned a lost book to the library and then took a short shopping trip to the dollar store for a birthday gift and the grocery store for milk.  Hannah was very excited to use her own money to purchase a Barbie doll for $1.50 that she'd been eying for awhile.  The last time we went to the dollar store she had about a dollar and couldn't buy it, though she desperately wanted to.  Today she was proud to pay for it with her own money, even telling the clerk she was paying for her own doll.  Unfortunately, the poor doll has already lost an arm.

Hannah, doll and purse in hand, watching a preying mantis on the sale sign in the window

Next Hannah and I went to the Harrisonburg Farmers Market, where we were to meet up with Charles and Sophie after their movie.

Harrisonburg Farmers Market

This market is a bit more bustling than our small town market that only has a few vendors each week.  While there we ran into Hannah's 3rd grade teacher (school starts in another week and a half) and a colleague of mine from school.

Inside the market pavilion

On a whim, I bought a half bushel of tomatoes.  Since our vines haven't produced enough at one time to make sauce, these will be my marinara sauce tomatoes.  The recipe I want to try says it makes six pints, but I'm hoping for eight.  Once they ripen a few days, I'll find out how much sauce I'll get.

Farmers market tomatoes

Though my squash and zucchini haven't produced a ton this year, we have gotten one or two each week.  I've been saving some in the refrigerator and used a portion of what I had to make this delicious Summer Squash and Ricotta Galette (using homemade crust yet again).  Mom and Dad drove all day on a return trip from the Martin family reunion in Canada, so they joined us for dinner.  The galette was beautiful to look at and delicious to eat.

Summer Squash and Ricotta Galette

Hannah got another book off her reading list from the library yesterday, The Invention of Hugo Cabret.  It is told partially in pictures but still is a huge book, at over 500 pages.  She got the book yesterday afternoon around 3pm; after evening reading time tonight she's already on page 321.  I think that means she's enjoying it, though it's hard to tell since she always shrugs and says, "I guess" when I ask her how she likes the book she's reading.

Hannah and her huge book

Apple Pie

Before getting to today's activities, here's a few pictures from the aftermath of yesterday's storm:

Debris blown into and stuck to the carport door

Corn blown nearly horizontal.  Looks like it will be staying that way until we harvest the last ears and pull it out of the garden.

Today I finally got around to doing something with the apples we picked last Tuesday at Carter Mountain Orchard.

Virginia Golds from Carter Mountain

I peeled and sliced a bunch of these to make apple pie filling for canning in quart size jars.  I thought this sounded like a neat idea.  The pie filling is waiting on a shelf for you, ready to go, and all you have to add is crust and put it in the oven to bake.  Sounds perfect!

7 quarts of delicious apple pie filling

At the end of canning seven quarts, I still had apples and syrup left.  What's a girl to do?  Why, bake a pie (or two) of course!  Problem is... I had no pie crust in the freezer and my previous attempts at making crust from scratch have been disastrous.  I had pinned a recipe yesterday, however, and decided to give it a go.

Success!

Here you see the finished product after it had chilled in the refrigerator for an hour and been rolled out.  The trick was using the food processor to mix the dough.  If I had tried to do it by hand (again) I'm sure I wouldn't have succeeded.

Assembled pies going in the oven

Finished product

One pie was for us, and one we gave to our dear neighbor who loaned me her apple corer/slicer for today's project.  She said she got the better end of the deal. :)

Other pictures from the day:

Sitting pretty

Favorite past-time of late, playing Mario Kart

 

Power Outage

Today was marked by a power outage that left me reading in the dark by the light of an oil lamp.

Love using these lamps

We knew there was chance of a storm this afternoon, so I spent some time tying up my unruly tomatoes after church this morning.  I'm hoping this is the last time I'll need to tie them; they just keep growing!  Some are even taller than the corn.  It's crazy.  Given that a number of them are getting quite blight-ridden, I'm thinking our tomato days are numbered.  A friend offered for folks to pick some of her tomatoes, so I may do that later this week so that I can still can some of what I was wanting to can for the season.

Unruly tomatoes that have been tamed one last time

The storm came around 3pm or so and just dumped rain.  My parents' rain gauge showed 3 inches after it was over, with the storm lasting around 30 minutes.  Our basement is prone to flooding when large rains occur, so when the power went out (thereby disabling the sump pump) Charles really started to worry.  We have a generator that we'd never used, so Charles pulled it out but was having trouble starting it.  After three separate attempts that had him sweating and breathing heavy it finally started, but only after water had begun to seep into the basement.

The generator once Charles got it running

Once Charles got the sump pump running via the generator, we started sweeping the water in the basement up.  Thankfully, there was no damage; the ordeal was more of a nuisance than anything else.  I'm also thankful that Charles built my canning shelf yesterday since boxes of my canned goods had been sitting on the floor previously.  We eventually ended up plugging the refrigerator into the generator as well, since the power outage lasted until a little past 10pm.

After we ate a dinner of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, the girls gave us another Olympic performance.

Hannah's grand finish

Sophie's performance consisted of trying to convince her father to let her have her camera back.  Her Granny gave her a "grown-up" camera for her 6th birthday in July, and Charles has been telling her that she needs to take care of it, put it away when not in use, etc.  Well, apparently Sophie left it out, so Dad confiscated the camera.  Here she is "petting" Charles to try to sweet-talk him into letting her have it back:

Not a great picture, but she is patting his head

He didn't cave, so the scenes that followed this one were not as cute and not as pleasing to the ears either.  I'll spare you the details. :)

Canning Shelf

I'm going to let the pictures and captions tell today's story.

My workout partner this morning, doing her push-ups

Multi-colored fingernails

Taking care of Baby Abby, short for Abigail

An attempt at canning my favorite fresh salsa in the pressure canner.  Not crazy about how it looks, will have to see how it tastes.  If nothing else, it can be used as "Mexican" tomatoes in cooking recipes.

Opening an immature ear of corn to see what it looks like when it's growing

Today's corn harvest, froze another 4 quarts today

The bird's nest Sophie built while I was shucking corn.  She really hopes it will be adopted by a bird as its home.

See all the filled jars of summer goodies behind that beautiful little girl?  They really need a home.

Charles made good on his promise to build them a home today.

Completed shelf

All loaded with stuff (and room for more to come)

Charred BLT (minus the B) salad as the first course of tonight's dinner

All plated up with homemade blue cheese dressing... delicious!

Banky wearing the headphones that drown out the thunder

Evening reading time (and not so happy I'm taking her picture)

Patio Olympics 2012

Here's the scene at 7am on our back patio:

Warming up for their balance beam routines

Each girl had a routine they were excited to show me.  Here's Hannah's:

Careful not to fall!

Spinning dismount

Post-routine stretch

And Sophie's:

Posing mid-routine

Dismount action shot

Toweling off after all that exertion

Both girls have expressed interest in taking gymnastics classes after watching the Olympics this past week.  I'll attempt to sign them up through Harrisonburg Parks and Rec next week when the registration opens.

Later in the morning we tackled grocery shopping and school supply shopping.  At Wal-Mart.  On the first day of the tax-free holiday.  I must be crazy.  Actually, it went pretty well.  We didn't need a whole lot of things, and we got out without spending too much.

Later in the day I had a (not so) glorious moment in which I screamed and stripped my shirt off violently in the kitchen.  The girls wondered what in the world was wrong with me.  I kept feeling like something was tickling me, and finally I saw it.  A spider, crawling INSIDE my shirt.  I'm happy to say that spider is now dead.

One last little tidbit... I found the sign below on Hannah's door last night.  I'm not sure how long it's had this message, but I like it given that the previous message (on the reverse of the sign) said something to the effect of "Knock before entering."

I especially like the multiple exclamation points

Tomato Salsa and Swimming

Today was a little less busy, thankfully.  This morning I canned 5 pints of tomato salsa and vacuumed the pool.

I was a little disappointed with this salsa recipe out of Saving the Seasons.  I thought it tasted very vinegary.  I think I'll try a different recipe for the next batch.

I had another caprese salad for lunch today, in which I used this guy:

After lunch the girls and I went up to the pool to await the arrival of our guests.  Several Thursdays this summer we've opened the pool to our Sunday school class from church.  Today we had two families join us, and we had a good time.  After they were gone Hannah was diving for things in the deep end and wanted me to take a picture of her feet.

I really prefer this end of her, though.

Playroom Fort and Peach Salsa

My feet hurt.  A lot.  But we'll get to that later.  First, allow me to acquaint you with the "Rules":

I especially like #8

These are the rules for the fort Hannah and Sophie created yesterday afternoon in their playroom.  They played in it most of the morning this morning, while I was busy in the kitchen.

Outside the fort, where you must be inspected before you can enter.

Inside the fort (Yes, I passed inspection and was granted entry.)

They've asked to leave this fort intact for another day so that they can continue playing in it.

Hannah joined me for a (very) small portion of my workout this morning.  She likes to try to do some of the workout moves from time to time.

One-handed balance push-ups from P90X

But back to my feet.  I literally spent the entire day in the kitchen, but it was worth it for the 28 quarts of peaches that I canned and especially for the delicious peach salsa that I made and canned as well.

Simmering in the pot

8 pints canned. Aren't they beautiful?

I sampled some of this with my lunch since I finished it just before noon.  It is delicious!  I used this recipe and made a few modifications, as indicated below:

• I used mostly red onions to add color.
• I used only 3 jalapeno peppers since I didn't want it too spicy.
• I also reduced the cayenne pepper to about 1 tsp.
• I left out the cilantro since Charles doesn't like it. 
• I processed in water bath for 20 minutes.  The recipe said 10, but that just didn't seem long enough based on other salsa recipes I've seen, and I'd rather be safe than sorry.
• I used the upper range for both tomatoes and peaches and ended up with about 10 pints.  I put the last two pints into containers to go into the refrigerator for immediate consumption (one for mom and dad and one for us).

Charles ate some just a bit ago for his evening snack and also gave the recipe two thumbs up.  I think we'll keep it so we can make more next summer.