Yeah baby. I love my life right now.

We need to all remember that local stores like this one are the stores which build our economy.  We need to support them - even when we’re trying to save every dime.  Each dime we can eke out for these local stores comes back to our community over and over again.  Our local stores support local causes, like the dance concert and the women’s hockey league.

When you go to Cabaret, will you see an ad for Wal-Mart or Land’s End or Amazon?  Don’t count on it.  Purchasing goods from outside the community just sends your dollars away.  Dollars that you earned in this community.  Dollars that were earned to pay you by some poor schmuck cowtowing to the tourists (who are few and far between these days), or by your friend Jon, the lawyer, who spends each day at the courthouse defending local people.  The economy is holistic;  it brings us together through the sharing of our wealth, however meager we feel our part of that wealth.

When we lose one of these stores, we all suffer through the loss of easy access to goods, knowledge and charity.

Okay.  I’m getting off my soapbox now.

Today, my sweet honey-bunny went to work for me and I had a chance to spend some time online at the Seeds of Change website sorting through and picking out all sorts of seeds. Here’s my list:

Herbs: Sweet Genovese Basil, Slow-Bolt Cilantro, Forest Green Parsley, English Thyme

Vegetables: Early Russian Cucumber, Jalapeno Chili Pepper, Cocozelle Bush Zucchini, Peacevine Cherry Tomato, Stupice Tomato, Bountiful Stringless Snap Bush Bean, America Spinach, Nutri-Bud Broccoli, and the Lettuce Heaven Seed Collection

I love this time of gardening. I’m addicted to planning since nothing can go wrong until I start putting seeds into the earth. I make drawings (sad, sad drawings) of how much space each thing will take and dream about the neighbors driving by and pointing at the beauty of my garden. The truth? The neighbors will drive by, pointing at the bare spaces and the inevitable dead plant.

I haven’t gardened in years at this point. The last time I really had a garden was back in 1998 (Yes! The Last Century!) and I look forward to finding my gardening voice again.

For now, I’ve been knitting a sweater for myself, along with several other projects for a certain baby who is yet to arrive.  While I’ve been working on posting tons of pictures of everything on my Ravelry site, I haven’t posted any here because I’m now hiding the pics until the gifts actually are finished and arrive.  Not that the mother will be reading this blog (I don’t think I’ve even told her where it is).  However, due to my paranoia and inevitable belief that the world revolves around me, I have this idea that she might search me out on the internet, or click through my links on Facebook, or something else.

Oh yes.  I think that I might have gone off the deep end on this one.

A big milestone for me in my new role as “boss lady.” Last night I had to fire an employee. Yuck. That’s the only word for it. Yuck, yuck, yuck. I had to do it because he’d been just sitting around doing the minimum of work for at least a month now, and then on Friday he put out a tip jar. At a retail store! What are these kids thinking? His defense was that he saw one at another store. No! He’d seen a donation jar for some poor person who needed an operation, not a tip jar for some overprivileged kid living with his parents in a multimillion dollar home! Now I’m saying, “These kids today!” Suddenly I’m the crazy old lady living down the block with two cats and a dog shaking her cane and screaming at the neighborhood kids.

“Now it’s poor me, why me, oh me
Boring
the same old worn out blah blah story
There’s no good explanation for it at all

Ain’t no rhyme or reason
No complicated meaning
Ain’t no need to over think it
Let go laughing
Life don’t go quite like you planned it
We try so hard to understand
Irrefutable, indisputable
The fact is
It happens”

Doesn’t this just sound like me? Especially the “same old worn out blah-blah story” part. So here we go. My same old worn out blah-blah story.

Since we last convened, Steph and I sold SpringSips and almost had our lives back to the point of regular chaos when Steph’s calf started hurting. After three weeks of pain and a final descent into delirium, I managed to get her to the doctor. Staph infection, emergency surgery, release from hospital (on oral antibiotics!), oral antibiotics didn’t work so scheduled surgery, discovery of rare yet lame lung disease (symptoms = shortness of breath during extreme exertion. Is it just me or doesn’t everyone have that?), release from hospital (on IV antibiotics. Boo!), healing, healing, healing, less healing than there should be, learning to be a nurse and dressing her leg twice a day to promote healing of the suture, healing, healing, pain starts in arms and shoulders, change back to oral antibiotics (yay!), chiropractor visits every two days to get the shoulder and arm pain alleviated. And that’s where we are today. We go to see the doctor on Thursday for our next checkup and I’m expecting good news. Woo-hoo!

During all of this, our manager quit at Cellar Liquors and gave me two weeks notice. So I’m learning to run the liquor store on the fly while being a nurse. Luckily, our chef/manager/chief bottle-washer is still around upstairs and she’s been making some fabulous lunches at the cafe.

Meanwhile at my sweet honey bunny’s bedside, I knitted a sweater and a pair of socks, and preserved about a gross of jellies, jams and butters - all for Christmas gifts.  My silver lining?  I’m almost done with my Christmas crafting!

Well, that was August through now. See. Same old worn out blah-blah story. Eventually I’ll learn to stop making plans so God will stop taunting me.

So, later that same day, I went out to our local hardware store and picked up some jars for jellies and jams. My CSA is finally ponying up with the fruit bounty and our first one had arrived: Cherries and Apricots. My sweet honey bunny grabbed the cherries, but I managed to make a batch of apricot jam and an apricot and cherry crisp (although I had to go get frozen cherries to do it! I must admit, those cherries are really, really tasty.).

Jam and jelly and preserves and butters are my summer passion these days. Last year, I managed to put away enough to do Christmas presents and hostess gifts. Sometimes I think that people would rather have something else, but my time feels so valuable and the love and good energy that gets stored in those little jars seem really special, so jams and jellies and preserves and butters are what people get for now. At least until they get less picky about what they wear and I can start crocheting and knitting for them.

Yes, most of them already have afghans and scarves.

Except Lucy. And she’s moving north. Hmmmmm……..

Anyway, last week I really started working on preserving with the apricot jam. Since then, I’ve made raspberry freezer jam, grapefruit freezer jelly and a whole buttload of blueberry jam, and I have 20 lbs of sweet cherries waiting for me to preserve them. I’ve been considering my possibilities, and I’ve settled on a few techniques. Since they are so fresh and wonderful, I thought I’d just pit and freeze a couple of batches for pies later in the winter. A freezer jam from them would be yummy too, and Sure-Jell has a recipe so I’m going to give that a try. Finally, I have a couple of recipes for preserves that I’m going to frankenstein together and see what comes out.

When I’m working with an easy fruit to deal with (ie. perfectly ripe stone fruits or berries), then I can pump out a batch before I come in to work. Creating something like that so early in my day makes me feel proud since I’ve already accomplished something. Plus, the task usually only takes an hour. Ahhh…. Easy and fulfilling. My favorite type of chore.

Cherries are daunting. Cherries need to be pitted. Therefore, I haven’t gotten around to working with the cherries yet, and Lord only knows what’s coming in this week. I only get about 8 hours to prepare myself before my bounty arrives and I’ve done poorly this week at getting rid of the last week’s haul.

So, tonight I will be making a fabulous supper with a big healthy salad and pitting cherries afterwards. Let’s see how far I get.

Woo-hoo! Pitting cherries. Just what I dreamed I would be doing when I was a little girl.

Pecan, Butterscotch, Dried Cranberry Oatmeal Cookies. No chocolate, no raisins.

Yummy! I’m pretty proud because I’ve been known to obsess over recipes for weeks and months. Someday I’ll tell you about the Sourdough Saga.

For now, the recipe:

Pecan, Butterscotch & Cranberry Oatmeal Cookies

1/2 cup (1 stick) butter

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup granulated sugar

Beat until creamy. Add:

1 egg

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Beat well. Combine:

3/4 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon salt

pinch nutmeg

Add to butter mixture and mix well. Stir in:

2 1/2 cups oatmeal

1/2 cup dried cranberries

1/2 cup chopped toasted pecans (I toasted mine for five minutes at 425 degrees and then chopped them roughly)

1/4 cup butterscotch morsels

Form into little cookie burgers (for my 3 oz cookies, they ended up being about 3 inches across and 1/4 inch thick before cooking. For regular sized cookies, I’d just smash down a couple of tablespoons of dough.) and place on an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake at 350 degrees for 10 to 15 minutes. Cool one minute on the sheet before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely. Store in an airtight container.

I’m thinking that they won’t last too long, if my customers are anything to go by. I haven’t had to throw any away so far.

So, I’m out at 7:30 playing frisbee with Cappy and I see a hot air balloon rising over the trees. I think anywhere you have lots of tourists, you’ll find hot air balloons, and we have our share for sure. However, this time I remembered that this weekend is the Balloon Rodeo (or “Rainbow Weekend” - which I don’t really use because, for me, that was a couple of weeks ago at this point).

Tomorrow, during my playtime with Cappy, I should be able to see dozens of balloons rising over the trees and playing with each other. Since hot air ballooning really only works in the cool of the day, you have to rise early to see it, and now my early rising may finally pay off.

Pictures tomorrow if it does.

Yep. Here are three of the cookies that I made today. And here are the problems:

To my regular oatmeal cookie recipe, I added dried cranberries and dried blueberries. The combination tastes like… well, raisins. I don’t want these cookies to have raisin flavor.

Now, a lot of people might say, “why not raisins?”

To them, I reply, “I don’t like raisins.”

And they reply, “So what? I don’t like lots of things, but I still cook them for my family/wyfe/colleagues/husbynd.”

During high school, for about a year, this african-american woman cleaned our house once a week. That same day, she would make a dinner for us. I believe this was my mother’s saving grace during this period.

This woman made such good food. I especially remember the green beans with pork. Oh my God. That was a dish worth thanking the good Lord for. If you’ve ever lived or visited the south, you’ve probably eaten these beans. They show up at every potluck and on the holiday table and, for some lucky people, when company shows up. I asked her why her food tasted better than other people’s, hoping for some trick to the recipe.

She replied, “I don’t make anything that I don’t like.”

Well, that just blew my little sixteen year old mind. Not cooking anything that you don’t like? How could I do that?

I finally found the answer: You just don’t cook anything that you don’t like. If you’re cooking something to which you have an aversion, just figure out how to make it so it tastes good to you.

She probably didn’t even have a high school diploma. One of the smartest people I ever met.

They don’t spread like I thought they would.

No biggie. I just pressed them out with the heel of my hand and made big “oatmeal cookie burgers.” Still the right taste.

The cookie is just a good cookie. Not outstanding.

I want a great cookie, and I’m a little obsessed with that idea. Here’s what I’m going to do:

Only one fruit - dried cranberries.

Butterscotch Chips.

Toasted Pecans.

I’ll let you know how that turns out.