Some Late-Summer Miscellany

So what else has our family been up to this last month besides canning and football? Lots of little things...so it's going to be one of those blog posts with no rhyme or reason, as I try to cram in several mostly unrelated events.

Firstly (and superficially), I celebrated with a bunch of girlfriends when The Hunger Games movie came out on DVD. As you know, I am a bit of a fan, and so are many of my friends. So, when Jacquelyn invited everyone over to her house for a mommy movie party, she joked to everyone else that I would bring a cake along. Although I had promised no such thing, it got my brain thinking...just what would a Hunger Games cake look like, anyway? Well, this is the twisted concoction I came up with:

I made the arrow out of an eyeliner pencil & painted over it! From there, it's a chocolate-mint cake with minty green frosting (most of the book takes place in a forest, so I figured the brown-and-green color combo was appropriate). Then I sprinkled blueberries on top, with some strawberry-syrup "blood," to represent the poisonous berries from the climax of the story. I admit: chocolate-mint and blueberry-strawberry aren't the greatest flavor combinations! However, it was still lots of fun to make...and it tasted pretty good, too. So thanks, Jacquelyn, for inspiring me to bake a cake...even if it was just by accident!

We also managed to have a picnic dinner in Madera Canyon over Labor Day weekend. Very peaceful and quiet, and it was great to take a little walk in the woods, away from humanity. The canyon is beautiful in the evening!

We've had an unusually wet summer, so the local amphibians are friskier (and larger!) than usual. I saw this big toad outside a Dairy Queen one night, devouring every cockroach he saw...

A week or so later, just look what we found on our doorstep one morning:

The big fella spent the whole day relaxing in the shade of our front porch. By evening (after leaving behind a huge pile of poop--yuck!), he was ready to head out and eat him some cockroaches. I hope we see him again someday; the kids loved him.

As luck would have it, we had a library book at the time that was perfect for our toady friend

The weather is finally starting to cool off. Last Friday was especially breezy and fresh so I decided to take Celeste & Aurora to the zoo.

My little gals on safari

Luckily, we were just in time for the unveiling of the Zoo's newest arrival; a so-far-unnamed baby zebra! He was all head & legs...very cute (but shy, as you can see by the pictures; luckily his mama was close by)!

We didn't get to see too many more animals that day (maybe they were all on siesta when we visited?), but the weather was so great that it was simply a pleasure to walk around the zoo and enjoy the beautiful day. I can't wait until winter, when just about every day is like this!

I have such cute girls.

In other news, both Nathan and I had talks in sacrament meeting at church in the last month. Nathan's talk wasn't a long one, but it was significant because it was part of a special "Invitational Sunday." All the sacrament meeting talks, and all the auxiliary lessons, were geared towards visitors, less-active members, or investigators. It was a missionary-themed Sunday; everyone was encouraged to bring a friend to church! Nathan spoke and bore testimony eloquently of the Book of Mormon. Best of all, Nate's parents (at our girls' urging) attended sacrament meeting for the first time in a while. It was great to see them there, and it was great to feel the spirit so strongly on a day with so many new faces.

The topic of my talk a few weeks later was "Language/Honoring The Name of God." I was in tears when I heard the news...firstly, because I haven't spoken in sacrament meeting (much less spoken to adults!) since I became part of Primary more than four years ago. Also, swearing and profanity is something I personally struggle with (especially lately), so I felt like a total hypocrite for speaking on this particular subject.

Thankfully, writing the talk was an eye-opening experience; not only did it make me more cognizant of my behavior, but it helped me feel the importance of changing it. It lit a fire under me! I will still have to do some major adjustments in the way I speak, but I feel like this talk helped show me the way. I'm very grateful for the opportunity I got to prepare a talk on this topic; it's as if the Lord knew just what I needed to do to get me out of my rut!

So what else have we been working on? A little of this, a little of that...a birthday party or two, a few play dates, a couple of termite inspections (nothing serious yet, thankfully), some game nights (including one family barbecue dinner with friends)...things like that. And all the while, the weather is slowly (but surely) cooling off. It's gonna be a lovely fall.

That Magical Time of Year...When The Broncos Are Playing

Well, it's football season again...my favorite sport of all! Football gets a lot of play in the Barrett household, even on Sundays when I really have more important things to do...like make lunch/dinner, or visit with friends and family, or take care of Primary business. All those things are well and good...but if the Denver Broncos game is on TV, everything else usually ends up taking the backseat.

Nathan and I were both raised in the Denver, Colorado area, so we are both dyed-in-the-wool Broncos fans. If you were a kid growing up in Colorado in the 1980s (the Age of Elway), watching the Broncos was what you did. It was what everyone did on Sunday. Our neighbor had a huge Broncos flag that flew proudly every fall weekend. Even the local Mormons (like my family) got into the football spirit. If the game was on TV during our church services, Dad would set the VCR to record it (ah, the days before DVR). Then we would drive home in total radio silence, so as not to have anything spoiled for us.

Awesomeness. Thanks 104.3 The Fan

I can remember a few times when the young men in our congregation would pray for the Broncos to win big that day...in priesthood meeting! During one of the Broncos' Super Bowl runs, our family sat patiently in the car, as it idled in the driveway, listening to the end of the game on the radio, because we just couldn't wait to find out the results on the TV 30 seconds later. When they scored the game-winning field goal (the one that sent them to the Super Bowl), we were all cheering outside in our chilly car. Yeah, we were a little bit weird.

As luck would have it, my mission farewell fell on the same Sunday as Super Bowl XXXII--John Elway's fourth of five Super Bowls, and the one in which he finally tasted victory over the favored Green Bay Packers, led by Brett Favre in his prime. As thrilled as I was for my mission farewell, and as much as I'd been preparing, I confess that on that evening, when I heard car horns and cheers echoing throughout our neighborhood, I was more excited by the Super Bowl victory than my upcoming mission!

The following day, my brother and I (who ditched school!) drove to downtown Denver and became two tiny specks in a teeming mass of over one million crazed fans, who were there to welcome their conquering heroes home. We ended up standing in front of a ten-foot-tall speaker, which blared loud rock music most of the time we were there. After the victory rally, I had a slight headache; my ears didn't stop buzzing for some time (in fact, I suspect I suffered mild hearing loss that day). But I regret nothing! It was still a euphoric, amazing experience.

 I was serving my LDS mission in Moscow, Russia during early 1999, when Elway rose victorious again in his second straight (and last) Super Bowl, against his old coach Dan Reeves and the Atlanta Falcons. But living thousands of miles away didn't stop me from showing my team spirit:

Ready to preach the Word of God AND sport some stylin' Broncos swag

At the time, a few of the office elders in the mission (also huge Broncos fans) snuck a peek on the Internet to check the results of the game. I was the happy recipient of a (slightly mission-illegal) late-night phone call, in which we all rejoiced at Elway's final triumph.

Now that I've lived in Arizona for several years, I haven't been able to follow my favorite team as closely as I used to. For one thing, we're in the Arizona Cardinals' television market (yawn), and so we don't get many AFC games (and, in a related note, we're too cheap for cable). For another thing, the Tucson area is pretty blase about most pro sports, since they have no pro teams of their own. For yet another thing, most of our friends in the area are more into college football--which is nice, but which we don't like quite as much. And finally, Life has happened to me, and with three small kids and church responsibilities and all that entails, I just don't get time to follow football as closely as I'd like (however, that hasn't stopped me from discovering--and obsessing about--fantasy football in the last few years).

However, our love for the Broncos remains (even though the last decade has been a little rough). That's why, when Nathan was offered the chance to attend a Broncos vs. Cardinals preseason game in Phoenix, he jumped at the chance...despite having only 48 hours notice and having no place to stay the night afterward. Luckily, one of my old mission companions lives in the Phoenix area, and she graciously offered to let Nathan crash for the night. Off he went! His seats actually ended up being decent:

Of course, the biggest reason he went was to see the Bronco's newest starting quarterback: Peyton Manning, our longtime foe suddenly turned friend in the off-season. When he was the Colts' starting quarterback, Manning was a distant, yet ever-threatening menace. Most of the time, we had to watch jealously as he racked up crazy passing statistics, endless winning records, MVP awards, two trips to the Super Bowl (with one victory), and a surefire Hall-of-Fame career. For years, we would always start sweating a little bit when Manning took the field against the Broncos; more often than not, it meant agonizing defeat.

What a difference a year makes. After sitting out the entire 2011 season with an injury, Manning elected to be traded from the Colts, and signed with the Broncos. It's been a surreal summer, trying to picture Manning in the orange and blue:

from getty images

Nathan was very excited the night of the preseason game (or so he tells me, anyway...he's a little blog-shy lately, so I'll do my best to represent him here). He wasn't just excited because it was the first Broncos game he'd ever watched live (I managed to catch a preseason game live many years ago, when Elway was still playing). Nathan also wanted to see Peyton Manning in the flesh, and see if all these crazy news stories about Peyton becoming a Bronco were actually true.

Well, Nathan did get to see Manning...

...there he is!! See him?? The tiny little ant wearing the white number 18 jersey...you may have to squint kind of hard.

Anyway, Nathan did indeed catch a glimpse of Manning in a Broncos jersey, wandering the sideline and talking to the other players and coaches. Sadly, however, Manning didn't play a single down in this game! Ah, the vagaries of the preseason! At least the right team won (the Broncos kicked a last-minute field goal to come out on top, 16-13). I got to watch a little of the game on TV, as well; I was able to bond with Nathan through technology. Nathan got to sit back, relax, bask in the crowd noise, and hang out with the guy who got him the ticket--a friend of ours from our LDS ward. Afterwards, tired but happy, he made his way to Gilbert, crashed at my former mission companion's house, then drove safely home the next morning.

Fortunately, Nathan and I got to watch the next Broncos game on TV together...it was the first Sunday night game of the season (Sept. 9), and it was nationally televised. Gee, do you think Peyton Manning being on the team could have anything to do with that? Thankfully, Manning was his usual efficient, accurate self, leading the Broncos to victory (it still feels weird typing out that sentence). They won at their home field, Sports Authority Stadium (or Mile High Stadium, to the nostalgic holdouts like myself). Peyton (and the whole team, in fact), looked pretty darn good in deconstructing the Pittsburgh Steelers (a team little loved by most of the Barrett extended family!).

So, Broncomania lives on in our home. With the arrival of an elite QB, we have a new sense of hope that has been lacking in our Bronco-watching for the last few years (the Tim Tebow hiccup notwithstanding. I liked Tebow as a person, but I wasn't sold on him as a starting NFL quarterback). Even if we aren't able to watch every single Broncos game this season, we will still be cheering them on. Some things never change.

What I've Canned This Fall...In Case You're Interested

Well, it's finally time to put away my steam canner and give it a rest...for a month or two, at least. Because it's been a busy few weeks in the Barrett kitchen!

Since we went to Apple Annie's a couple of weeks ago, I have had a lot of produce sitting around the house, waiting to be canned. In fact, I've been spending most of my free time canning since that trip! However, my fall canning "season" started well before the trip to Willcox. As a rule, I spend much of late August/early September canning every year, regardless of what my haul is from Apple Annie's. Maybe it's the time of year that puts me in the mood; maybe it's all the produce going on sale in time for the fall harvests--maybe it's a little of both.

This may seem pretty boring to some, but I thought I'd list off all the food I've canned at home this season. All in all, it's been an average year for canning (although I did have to buy a new pallet of canning jars, so I think I am a little ahead of the curve this time!). I should also probably say that, despite what some may think, I am NOT a world-class home canner! I do a nice variety of foods, but I don't can nearly the amount that many dedicated canners do. Here's a look at my pantry, after my canning was all done:

DISCLAIMER: not all those jars are newly canned. Many are left over from 2011

Now, if I was a real, hard-core, provident-living guru, my whole pantry would be filled with those jars, from floor to ceiling, wall to wall. As you can see, it's just a few rows of stuff. Oh, and my salsa, which is on the other side of the pantry:

In broad terms, I'm a bit of a minor-league canner. Maybe if my kids were a little older and could help me (or at least stay out of my way!), I'd get a little more done. Chances are good that I will be canning more as they get older (and consume more food!). At any rate, though, I'm still very proud of what I've accomplished. Home canning is hot, lengthy work, but the sense of satisfaction you get at the end of it is incalculable. It's so wonderful to feel that you are preserving food for your family's good that will last a long time!

To fully chronicle my canning in 2012, I'd have to go back to earlier in the year, when I made two different batches of jam...blueberry-orange, and blackberry mango.

Those jams, plus many more, are featured in this picture.

As you can see by this picture, I have a jam problem. I just can't stop making it! The result is a whole lot of pint jars stacked high in my pantry. We love the jam, but we just don't go through it as fast as I make it! Some of these jams are years old (there's even one at the bottom of the picture that was processed in 2008!). At least we're well-prepared for an apocalypse in which nothing will be left of America but bread and peanut butter.

We picked a lot more apples than this; this is after most of the canning!

I've also canned two small batches of applesauce this year: one in February (made from Fuji apples, one of our favorites for applesauce), and one last week (made from the Criterion apples we picked at Apple Annie's). The Criterion batch was a little too "sour" for it to be truly good applesauce, but it will probably still please my kids. Since I picked so many apples this year, I decided to make a few jars of sliced apples (to be used in pies, desserts, etc.) for good measure, too!

(I may be posting about my canning a little prematurely--I do have one more round of canning to do before the year is out. My absolute favorite applesauce is made with Jonathan apples. They are just a little tart and firm enough that they can well; plus their red skins give the applesauce a beautiful rosy color. As soon as a local store puts the Jonathan apples on sale--this is usually in October or November sometime--I plan on buying at least 30 pounds of the apples and making them into yummy tart-sweet applesauce, thus making my shelf even more full.)

My Month of Canning (aka August/early September) started when I bought a 20-lb. case of peaches from Bountiful Baskets, a local produce co-op. I decided to do several jars of peaches, since we were running a bit low in the pantry. Then I had enough peaches (and pint jars) left over that I succumbed to the "jam bug" once again, and made some peach jam (with mango!) for the first time in several years.

I just love the color of freshly canned peaches...such a beautiful sunny yellow-orange!

A couple of weeks later, I also canned my salsa for the year. We still had more jars than usual left over from 2011, so I thought I would "only" do a double-batch this time. I've blogged about canning salsa before, but I tried a new trick this year that I wanted to document:

As before, I still grilled/roasted all the chile peppers and garlic (instead of using the George Forman grill this year, I put them in the oven and drizzled a tiny bit of oil over them). However, instead of just putting the roasted peppers into storage bags to puree later with the tomatoes, I pureed all the chiles and garlic together in advance, to make this paste:

I stored these bags in the fridge overnight, and on the actual day of the canning, I poured the paste into the boiling tomato mixture. Just before doing that, though, I also pureed most of the cooked tomatoes together with the onions! Long story short, I pureed most of the salsa ingredients together this time around. I thought this might make the texture very thick.

I was right! (this time) Here's a picture with a jar of salsa from 2011 (on the left) and a jar from 2012 (on the right). As you can see, the newer batch is a lot smoother and a little "greener"--probably from the pureed green chiles. The pureeing also distributed the heat of the chiles better throughout the tomato base. The result is maybe the tastiest batch of salsa I've made yet! If anyone wants to try my salsa recipe, I recommend pureeing the chiles in advance, and then pureeing the tomatoes with the onions. The result is a salsa whose texture feels store-bought. Very delicious!

After going wild at Apple Annie's and buying enough produce for a third batch of salsa, I finally finished out with about 13 total quarts for the year. Here's the picture again of all the salsa in my pantry (as of this writing, there's another quart sitting in the fridge!):

There are three different batches of salsa pictured here: the 2011 salsa (the three pint jars on the right); the first 2012 batch (middle column & top jar of left column), and the 2012 Apple Annie's batch (it's the bottom-left quart; it's much redder in color than the other two batches). I pureed all the ingredients in the Apple Annie's batch, but the flavor didn't turn out quite as well as it did in the earlier batch--it's a little too mild. It may be because I had fewer types of peppers to work with (I had mostly jalapeno peppers in this batch, instead of Anaheim chiles, which I usually use). I think the main reason is that I used the fresh-picked tomatoes from Apple Annie's. They had a much stronger flavor than the store-bought tomatoes I used in the other batch, and so they overwhelmed the relatively fewer chiles I used. Nevertheless, it was still a pretty good batch; I am very excited at the way it all turned out this year!

I also canned about 13-15 quarts of pears shortly thereafter:

Apple Annie's doesn't sell many Bartlett pears, so we were lucky to get so many big, juicy ones. My family actually eats more canned pears than peaches, so we are going to be set for at least a year with all these pears!

Then, I decided to try something else I hadn't made for several years--apple butter! In the past, I've canned it in pint jars...but apple butter is so rich & flavorful we just didn't go through it that fast. So this year, I decided to splurge on some half-pint jars, so that the unused apple butter wouldn't languish in the fridge so long:

Such cute little jars! It was fun to fill them up. :)

I ended up with nine half-pints of apple butter, and they made the house smell so good I could have eaten a whole jar right then and there. I still have three empty half-pints left over. They will be perfect for when my jam-making compulsion acts up again.

So here's one more picture of my pantry, post-canning binge:

To sum up what's on each row (everything is listed left to right):

Top Row: Criterion applesauce; 2012 peaches; 2012 pears; 2012 apple butter; 2012 apple slices
Middle Row: 2011 apple pie filling and 2012 peaches; 2012 Criterion and Fuji applesauce; 2011 canned pineapple (I wish I could claim this, but it was a gift from a friend!) and canned apricots (from my grandfather's farm, which ceased to exist several years ago--I think I'd better use them up quick!), more 2011 apple pie filling, and all my jam (includes blueberry, strawberry-mango, blackberry-mango, raspberry-mango, blueberry-orange, and peach-mango, as well as an old can of apple butter. Whew!)
Bottom Row: 2011 pears; 2012 Fuji applesauce; a variety of peaches from 2010-12

That, plus the salsa on the opposite wall, amounts to a fair amount of work...with lots more applesauce to come in a month or two! This may be my most boring blog post ever, but I have enjoyed documenting my work. Hopefully this stuff will all fill a bunch of happy bellies in the months and years to come.

A-Picking (And A-Digging) We Will Go...Our Apple Annie's Trip

We've been to Apple Annie's before (and I've blogged about it before, too!), but the trip we took to Willcox last weekend may have been our most fun yet. I'm not sure why...likely it was because our girls are all sufficiently old and autonomous enough to help us out.

As usual, our first stop was Apple Annie's Produce Garden, which lies a few miles away from the main Orchard. We don't often have a "plan" when we come here; we just like to see what's fresh and then see if we can't work it into our diets for the next several days. This time, we did something we'd never done before...we decided to dig for potatoes!

Usually, we just pluck the food right off the vine/branch/whatever. This time, we had fun getting our hands a little dirtier. The garden staff supplied the mini pitchforks, and we dug to with gusto.

As you can see by this "after" picture (taken later at home), we may have gone a bit overboard on the potato digging...but it was so much fun!

Everything on the table AND in the wagon is ours

We got plenty of other produce as well. A friend in Sahuarita wanted me to pick her up some green beans so she could can them, so we got about 10 pounds of those. In addition, we picked lots of squash (both zucchini and yellow summer squash), several green peppers, some humongous cucumbers, lots of jalapeno peppers, and several pounds worth of tomatoes. We bought 126 pounds of produce in all!

I was so inspired by all the fresh stuff I saw that I decided to can even more salsa than I had already done (which was about 12 pints, a week or two before). I guess Apple Annie's does this to me...I get in "food storage" mode every time I visit!

Lorelai is ready for fruit-picking ACTION.

After that big haul, we drove over to the orchard. Usually, we like to pick a few peaches at the orchard, but I'd done all my peach canning for the year already. Too bad, because apparently this has been a pretty bountiful year on the peach-growing front. However, I was interested in picking lots of their Bartlett pears, which my family eats more of anyway.

We got quite a haul of the pears this year! Then we headed for the apple orchard...this was the only (minor) disappointment of our trip:

Since we visited in late August, most of the apples hadn't fully ripened yet. I'd been secretly hoping that the Fuji apples were ready to be picked, but no such luck. Fuji apples are my favorite for making applesauce, which my kids love. However, there were Criterion apples ready to be picked, so we got a bunch of those...

As it turns out, the Criterions will probably can pretty well. They have the consistency of Granny Smith apples, and they are somewhat tart as well. They are a little too sour to make ideal applesauce, but I think they will make good apple butter! I also plan on canning some sliced apples (for pies & other desserts), and these will fit the bill nicely.

All our apples & pears in the wagon; all our girls on the table

After our hard work, it was time to eat! It's fairly expensive to eat the burger lunch at the orchard, but it's darn tasty as well. Plus, on this day, all lunchtime proceeds were going to the March of Dimes, so we were eating for a good cause. Well, two good causes...the March of Dimes, and stuffing our hungry stomachs.

No lunchtime at Apple Annie's is complete without a slice of their pie a la (gigantic) mode. I had apple cherry pie, with half a carton of vanilla ice cream on top:

The girls ate well! They also had a little time to goof off before we headed back home, heavy-laden with the fruits (and vegetables) of our labors.

So...she's a "crab-apple," then? Thank you, thank you!! I'll be here all week...

In my next installment, I'll discuss the "fate" of all this food (in other words, I'll give a brief report of my fall canning).