What To Do With 4 Bushels of Peaches

Wonder if I had lost my mind, that's what!! Susannah and I made the trip on a Friday, driving 2 hours each way, to pick up peaches for myself and a friend. Thankfully my sister lives probably all of 5 minutes from the orchard so we had lunch with her, and then when everything took much longer than I anticipated, we were able to stop by her house again so I could feed Susannah before we headed back home. The bed of Daniel's truck was full of boxes of peaches!

I wish I had taken a picture of my kitchen floor crammed full with the boxes of peaches. Instead I have a picture of this beauty:
The peaches were enormous this year. I guess the weather must've been just perfect, because quite a few of them were as large as the one I'm holding in my hand. No puny, shipped across the nation, grocery store peaches here!

So what did I do with all those peaches besides wondering if I'd lost my mind? I canned peaches and canned peaches and canned peaches. That's what. Here is the finished product, all 72 quarts (maybe it's 73?).
I only had 1 jar crack (I'm pretty sure it had a hairline crack to start with), and every single jar sealed! I was so happy about that!

I also canned 2 canners (14 jars) of peach pie (or cobbler or crisp :) ) filling.
And made pies to put in the freezer to pull out later and bake - they taste like a fresh peach pie that way! Here is the big batch of pie dough (w/out the water) for 7 pies. (I like my big bowl!)And here's the peaches for said pies.And here's the pies freezing! (I ended up rolling the dough thick, so I had 6 pies + leftover dough, and I baked one of the pies to enjoy right away.)Once they were frozen solid, we took them out of the pie plates, wrapped each one in 2 layers of plastic wrap, then into a plastic bag marked with which pie plate it came out of (so I can put it back in that same one to bake for the right fit), and then stacked them up in the freezer. It is very important to remember to line the pie plates before you make the pie! Last time I forgot, and all my pie plates were in the freezer until I started baking the pies :P

And made "Peach Caskets" - basically peach tarts. I used my Pampered Chef Press'n'Seal, leftover pie dough, and pie filling with small-diced peaches and I made it a little thicker so it wouldn't run as much.
After the Peach Caskets were frozen (unbaked), I put each one in a sandwich baggie, then all of them into a larger plastic bag. This winter when we want a little dessert, I can pull a few out and bake them without having to eat a whole pie :)

And last but not least, I couldn't have accomplished all this in a timely fashion without my lifesaver, Katie.
She had a few days off work, and wondered if she could come visit. I told her to come on and we could work on peaches!! It was great. I could tend to Susannah's needs and not have to worry about making sure the canner was boiling or not boiling too hard, or did I need to set the timer, or was the timer getting ready to go off and the jars needed pulled out of the canner... And Katie could keep working on peaches while I fed Susannah, so there weren't big chunks of time where peaches weren't getting done.

Grocery Shopping 8/25/10

I haven't fully discussed with with Daniel yet, but it is so much easier to shop with a $40 budget, and I'm thinking that with Daniel's raise and all the overtime he's getting lately, we might leave it there for now. We can always lower it if we need to.

I do want to add that last week I didn't go shopping at all. I didn't want to go, there weren't any amazing deals I couldn't do without, and we didn't absolutely need anything. However, I had been waiting for such an opportunity so we could restock our beef supply. Daniel has a (free to us) membership at BJ's through his work, and they have the best price on ground beef... so... one evening when Daniel was finished working, and was close to BJ's, I asked him to stop and get some meat. So last week's groceries were:

13.5lbs of lean ground beef
3 lbs of lean ground turkey

Total OOP: $40.47


This week's groceries:

(2) 1lb. pasta - $1.00 ea.

(2) 5lb. flour - $1.34 ea.

1/2 gal. milk - $1.79

10 lb. potatoes - $3.99

3lb. onions - $2.98

Soy Sauce - $1.09

Margarine - $.99

Butter - $2.08

(2) Shamrock Chocolate Milk - FREE!

(2) Chicken Breasts - $1.79/lb.

(2) Sausage - $1.49 ea (Manager's Special)

2 lbs Carrots - $2.19

Celery - $1.00

1 lb. Lunchmeat - $3.99

18 ct. Eggs - $1.67

12 ct. Eggs - FREE!

4.95 lbs. Bananas - $.44/lb.

Avocado - $1.00

General Tso's Chicken Seasoning packet - $.99

Total OOP: $40.47

I did use a coupon for $1.50 off $7 meat purchase coupon, and a FREE doz. eggs coupon that I got in the mail from Kroger (yippee, I finally got coupons from them!).

I'm so excited to have beef on hand (from last week). I feel like a king, walking down to the freezer and having several lbs. of hamburger, and not feeling like I need to ration it out and make it last. I think if I can get it to work out, about once a month we'll skip the regular groceries and stockpile meat.

This post has been brought to you by 2 sleepy heads who just ate ice cream... and then everything was funny because Daniel kept saying stuff that was just... funny. At least to 2 sleepy people who'd just had ice cream. I'm rambling.... Goodnight!

Susannah ~ 5 months

It's been a while since I've written specifically about our beautiful Susannah Faith, and I think it's high time I write :) For memory's sake and to share her sunshiny-ness with you.

She is 5 months (and 2 weeks as of yesterday) now, and is really growing up! She's not a little baby anymore, but an active, food-eating little girly. I weighed her last week, I think, and she was right around 15 lbs. Tonight I opened another pack of diapers - size 3's. I still have plenty of 2's left, but she wizzed right through that size!

She still doesn't laugh very much, but I think she's just holding it in :) Her eyes and face laugh a LOT!

Daniel was getting her ready for bed one Sunday night and called to me, asking me to bring the camera into her room. This is what I found:

He had put the bloomers from her Sunday dress on her head :)

Daniel is such a good Daddy, and she loves him SOOO much! Since there are plenty of days that she doesn't get to see him at all (when he leaves before she wakes up and gets home after she's asleep for the night), I have a picture of him in her room, and she always lights up with a smile when I show it to her.


I put her in the Johnny-Jump Up sometimes and she likes it for a while. I'm sure once she gets the bouncing thing figured out better she'll like it for longer lengths of time :)


She's also gotten VERY good at rolling over in her bed in just the last week or two. There have been some nights recently where we put her to bed, then a little while later we hear her talking, and we go in to find her partying away in her pitch dark room. This is what we find:


I started her on baby cereal, applesauce and pureed peaches when she was 4 months & 1 week. Some may think that was a little early, but she was waking up early from her naps hungry, and woke up in the middle of the night twice, hungry. Yes, it was time to start the solids. It solved all of those problems :)

I decided I had to get a move on and start introducing vegetables, so last week I cooked and mashed up peas. Oh my, she did not like them very well at all. But with lots of coaxing, she ate a baby food jar's worth over the course of several days.

Tuesday night we had corn on the cob for supper. She was watching us like a hawk, so after I finished one of my ears I handed it to her. She examined it for a bit then like I knew she would, put it to her mouth. She wasn't too sure at first.

Then she got the end and started really tasting...Then she decided she liked it :) I let her chew on it for a little bit.Yesterday I cooked some green beans, and she isn't too excited about them, but she eats them MUCH better than the peas. She still prefers them with a little cereal on the spoon, but she doesn't gag if it's just beans like she would with the peas.

Tuesday and Wednesday my youngest sister, Katie was here. She was a HUGE help with finishing canning the peaches (another post for another day). She and Susannah also spent some time bonding :)

Susannah is still pretty tall. I haven't measured her recently, but she's easily wearing 9 month sleepers, and 6-9 months sleepers are almost too short for her. She LOVES her baths and swimming. Today we went to our MOPS pool party, and though I didn't get in the pool, I had her in a swim diaper and held her in the water. I think if she would know to hold her breath, she could kick and paddle enough to go somewhere! I hope we have another opportunity to go swimming yet this summer when Daniel or I can be in the water with her so she can really get the full experience.

She's my little sunshine. It's such a joy to walk into her room in the mornings, she just gets so excited, and wiggles and grins like she just couldn't wait to see me! I love being her Mama.

Awesome Friends

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I've been thinking lately how blessed I am to be able to have my best friends. I feel like I can share pretty much anything with them. In fact, I talk to them sometimes about stuff I wouldn't dream of telling anyone else! Maybe it's the fact that they don't know anyone else that I know that makes me feel comfortable with them like that, Ha!

The strange thing...

Of these friends, every single one of them I've become friends with either through Facebook or Blogging. One I've never even met IRL (in real life). But I love them and have come to consider them almost like sisters. I share with them, pray for them, cry with them, laugh with them, and wish I lived next door to each of them (I don't think that would ever be likely as we all live in different states!). They're the kind that I wouldn't care if they came over when my floor is knee-deep with clutter, the toilet is growing pink stuff (*ahem*), or I hadn't showered yet. Well, ok, I would care, but not as much :P

When I think about what great friends they are, I wonder... would we be as good of friends if we'd started out knowing each other in real life? If we saw each other in the grocery store every week, would we have taken the time to say "hi" and get to know each other, or would we have said "dude, she's nothing like me" and left it at that? Because, granted, we really ARE different from each other in a lot of ways. But somehow we have so much in common that I rarely see the differences.

Now I just need to gather up the guts to call them once in a while for a phone chat! Several times I think I'd like to talk to so-and-so, but can't get up the nerve, even though we have each other's phone numbers (well, I think I do... I might not have 1 or 2) and have said "call me!"

I've been working on this post for several days and still can't figure out how to end it. So, I'll just say, I love you guys! You know who you are :)