Monday, July 7, 2008

I'm having fun

We're keeping busy. We went over to Red Bank on Thursday to watch the fireworks. We had great seats, and it was nice to visit with family.

Over the weekend, we went berry picking again. This time, it was raspberries and blueberries. I processed the raspberries pretty quickly since they go bad so quickly. I made freezer jam and sorbet. As for the blueberries, I started off with a blueberry cobbler.

Rob was very (or should I say, berry) happy!
Last weekend, I finally used a gift card that I'd had since Christmas to buy this. So far, we've made a chocolate mint chip ice cream and the raspberry sorbet. Today I'm going to make blueberry ice cream. I'm going to try chocolate again--the first version I made just used chocolate syrup, and that's not chocolate-y enough (yes there is such a thing).

All this enthusiasm about making freezer jams and ice creams is partly brought about because I cleaned out the extra freezer left behind by the previous owners last week. (Only took three years!) The cleaning part was not exactly fun, but now we have a free freezer in our garage!

As I watch our grocery bill reach $100 every week (when it used to be $70), I've gotten interested in trying to preserve some of what we're buying or growing. I've even ordered a canning kit so that the tomatoes that we grow this summer actually end up in sauces and salsas instead of rotting on the vine. And instead of gorging or throwing out spoiled berries, I'm making all these jams. It'll be nice come winter-time to have some homemade jam!


And I finally started sewing Bobby's quilt. I've had the fabric cut for about a month, but it's such a big project that I was putting off starting (because it's going to take forever to finish). Of course, I'll never finish if I don't start. And actually working on a project will keep me out of the fabric stores. I'm chain-piecing the blocks to keep things interesting.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

You're a busy girl!! Homemade ice cream and sewing!! It sounds good. (BTW...I think $100 is really really GOOD for your grocery bill...maybe I need to rethink mine!!)