Lately

It's fall! As much as I love summer, I also love fall. The colors, the crisp air, that only-in-fall blue blue sky. 

We've done a few fun fall things:

Exploring at Beaudry Provincial Park, where there happened to be an ultra-marathon going on and I ran into (or rather, he almost ran into us) one of my extended family, who was racing and another who was supporting him. I don't really know what would possess someone to see how many 5.6k laps they could do in 3 or 6 or 12 or heaven forbid, 24 hours, but hey, everyone has different versions of 'fun', right?

  

We went canoeing! From the bridge in Headingly to our house at Aubrey. Took 3 hours, the sun was warm and the wind was mostly not in our faces. I just love canoeing. 

 We didn't stop for ice cream, but it was still fun.

Thanksgiving! Loren and Lori continue to outdo themselves using Thanksgiving meal components in new and interesting ways. Here we have, that's right, a GRAVY FOUNTAIN. Best idea since someone invented a chocolate fountain, I'll tell you. They made the stuffing and mashed potatoes into little balls and DEEP FRIED THEM, which, by the way, is the only mashed potatoes should be served. Breaded in panko crumbs, deep-fried, and then dipped in a GRAVY FOUNTAIN. Epic.

 We've done some canning and making and freezing. It started with me saying 'I'll take 70lbs' to the tomato woman at the farmer's market. See? that's 70lbs of tomatoes. (when you buy them in bulk they are cheap like dirt. 75 cents a pound) Aren't they purdy?

 I haven't canned in years for one reason or another, so it was especially exciting to be doing it in the new kitchen, designed by us, built by Henry John. It performed admirably. Jake and I made 36 jars of salsa in one day!

Chopping, chopping, chopping

 Jake is a chopping machine! Knives in both hands!

Chopping tomatoes is a lot of work. Like, A LOT. But it was fun.

 

 Man, blogger is being stupid. But in the bowl up there you've got the raw stuff. And then, in the canner! Kind of love the canner, and was nervous that it wouldn't work on the new stove (it's induction), but it does! It worked great.

The finished product(s). Yum! Needs salt, though, and isn't nearly as spicy as I thought it was going to be considering that Jake's finger was burning from the juice of one for DAYS. 

(Full disclosure: The salsa used up less than half the tomatoes. Jake also made two kinds of spaghetti sauce for the freezer and roasted-red-pepper-and-tomato-sauce and I made 5L of tomato sauce, and about 12 pints of stewed tomatoes. I also made a roasted-tomato soup that was so good I thought it would be a good idea to buy 20 more pounds of tomatoes. Guess what's in the oven right now? That's right! Roasted tomatoes! But now they're gone. All the tomatoes. And the farmer's market is over so I can't even be tempted to buy any more. Which I'm not. For real.)

 

I also made applesauce. It's so easy, and so delicious. You just cut up apples (cores, peels, seeds, stems, everything!), cook them on low (without adding anything) for a few hours, and then mash them up in that metal thingy. It tastes NOTHING like store-bought applesauce. I forgot how good it is, to be honest. I made two rounds. By the second round I was pretty sick of mashing apples, but damn that stuff is good. Now I need a big ham roast to eat with it.

 

And then yesterday, we went to Pine Point, a little spot out in the North Whiteshell that Jake showed me, that is GORGEOUS, especially in the fall. Right?

 At the rapids, enjoying some autumn sun. And very low water.

 I laid on the rocks for a while. I don't know when I discovered this, exactly, but I LOVE LOVE LOVE laying on rocks. Especially in the sun. There is something about the massive, smooth, clean granite of the Canadian Shield that just speaks to me in my soul. I can't NOT lay on it. I was going to write some more about that, but it just gets cheesy and ridiculous-sounding, so I'll just say that I do believe that there is nothing that could be wrong with me that couldn't be fixed by laying on some sunny Canadian Shield.

We made some amazing food. I saw a story somewhere about how if you take pictures of your food it signals some kind of food disorder, or problematic relationship with food, but I think what it signals is that I LOVE food, and I love it even more when it's cooked outside, over a fire, next to running water while surrounded by fall foliage. So there.

 

 

Happy Fall, everyone. Probably, by the time I post next, snow will be here.