Monday, August 29, 2011

What we did during Irene

We prepared for the rain we were supposed to get Friday by cleaning up the basement. We got everything up off the floor in case any water came in.

We picked all the ripe tomatoes from the garden and dug up the potatoes.
Also made a trip to the homebrew store and got ingredients for a "Dunkel" beer.

Saturday the rain started, and rained all day into Sunday. We made zucchini bread in the morning, and spent the afternoon making tomatoe sauce. We made 10 quarts again and got it all canned.
Sunday morning we checked the basement and it was dry. Outside some tree branches came down and some of our corn was blown over. The worst damage to the garden was the tomatillo plant, it snapped off at the base of the plant. It rained about 5 inches and if the basement wouldn't have been clean I'm sure some water would have come in. The rest of the day Sunday was spent brewing & wine making.
We picked dandelions this spring and froze them to use later. We had enough frozen to make a gallon of wine. We also had 2 gallons of grape juice that we used to make 2 gallons of grape wine.

For supper we used the spent grains from the beer to make bread sticks, cheesy bread sticks and the pizza crust. Everything turned out awesome, and there were no leftovers.
Cant wait to use some more of the spent grains this week.

Hope everyone is safe after the hurricane. We were supposed to have some flooding & high winds. Overall it wasn't too bad for us. We made out better than alot of people did.




Wednesday, August 24, 2011

What a vacation

Took a week off of work to do some backyard camping and hiking.
Our first night was great, the second two days of vacation were spent watching it rain. On the third day, I put up a tarp, and we made a giant pot of tomato sauce and canned it outside. We got ten quarts, and enough for a big pot of spagetti. It turned out really good.

After another day of rain we took a little hike. The next day was going to be the big day of vacation, with a trip to DC to check out the monuments and Smithsonian. We made it about 1-1/2 miles before we were in a car wreck. A guy ran through a red light and right into us. Luckily no one was hurt other than some bruises.
This ruined the whole day, and the next day was spent trying to get a rental truck. After finally getting our rental truck, we tore down camp, spent the night inside, and left early the next morning for a family reunion. It was a good time and we got to go on a hike at Trough Creek State Park.
view from one of the many ledges on the Ledges Trail.