A Busy Peachy Day

July 31, 2012


Yesterday was a real old fashioned summer day, a day for lounging and not getting dressed, filled with reading and knitting and decompressing, I so needed it.  I got caught up with the Olympics and finally got to watch the opening ceremonies that everyone's been talking about.  The Queen!  Isn't she fabulous?  What a sport!  I thought she looked beautiful in her soft pink and she is a very lucky queen indeed to have Mr. Bond as her escort.  I loved the fireworks and everyone singing Sir Paul's na na na anthem.  Was I seeing things, or did it look like he was missing a molar?  Oh, don't mind me, I'm tired today.


We have a tomato tasting every day.  FUN!  The bottom is Black Krim, my favorite on the plate, nice and tart.  The orange Persimmon was my husband's favorite, it's a bit sweet.   The top red was German Johnson, well, that one was just great too.  We love them all, and taste tests are kind of meaningless since they are all great.


Harvest is coming on strong in our little garden patch.  That means a lot of work for me, trying to figure out what to do with it.  Today was busy, I made 8 quarts of tomato sauce with about 35 pounds of tomatoes we picked this morning.  I prepared green beans and put them in the freezer, made 4 quarts of roasted eggplant soup and 2 pans of eggplant lasagna which was so good, I'll going to post the recipe tomorrow.


Today I answered the door and it was my neighbor giving me these beautiful peaches from her tree!    She would not take any veggies as a thank you in return, not even one cucumber, something about her going away next day or something like that.  Hmmm, very suspicious.   I did, however take a big bag of them to the knit store today, they seemed very happy to get them.  Nice to know this little bit of info.


So for the peaches, since I was immersed in the kitchen all day anyway, I thought of making a peach tart, but felt too frazzled for pastry and thought we (I) might be too fat for that anyway because I've been eating leftover cupcakes on the sly.  A better choice was to make a non fat peach sorbet.  Here's what I did:  Popped the peaches in boiling water to remove the skin, whirled them in the processor with 3 big spoons of sugar, 1/2 cup non fat Greek yogurt, juice and zest from 1 lemon and 1/2 teaspoon vanilla.  At this point I refrigerated the mixture, it's much better if it goes in the ice cream freezer very cold.  It took less than 1/2 hour in the machine, then fresh peach sorbet appeared, so good, so summer good.  My husband gave it a "ten".  He likes to rate my kitchen endeavors, I let him do that because he always gives me a nine or ten.  And that blob of white on my husband's sorbet?  It's Cool Whip, he loves that stuff and makes no excuses about it.  So now you're thinking, this guy is rating food?




I finished two books I haven't told you about.  Unfamiliar Fishes, a history of Hawaii since the arrival of the missionaries.  I love Hawaiian history, maybe because I visit Hawaii often and have so many friends there.  One of my friends is a descendent of one of the missionary families and her family is all over this book.  While I feel the author did her research and I learned quite a bit and thought it was interesting enough, I got fed up with her constant dismissive wise cracking about Christianity.  I put it down half way through and read another book, then picked it up again and finished it.  The second half was much better, more facts, less snarky, but still quite a lot snarky, just less of it.  I've read better Hawaiian history books.

The other book was Up From Orchard Street by Eleanor Widmer, a memoir of tenement life in New York's Lower East Side of the 20s and 30s.  I enjoyed it so much.  I love social history and really got swept away with the memorable characters of the author's youth.  Highly recommended!  Next time I go to New York, which is hardly ever unfortunately, I must visit the Lower East Side Tenement Museum.

I've just started Gone Girl and so far I love it.


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2 Comments

  1. Kristen, I think this shawl is the beautiful out of all of the ones you have made and your tomatoes are just too much. Your Granddad would of loved your garden and would be so proud of you abd your garden.....

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  2. I simply MUST have a Japanese eggplant in my garden next year! And it's so funny that you mention Color Affection. My girlfriend just introduced me to this pattern and I'm dying to get started. Just need to find the right yarn!

    Thanks for sharing!!

    Tina J.

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