Maybe it was the flash of lightning followed by grumbly thunder. Maybe it was all the celery I ate today, making my stomach grumbly. Whatever it is, I'm wide awake. Kids are sleeping in a tent in the backyard...probably another reason I woke up when the thunderstorm came through...but they never woke up or budged back into the house.
And this insomnia comes after a day when I felt like I could and should go to bed and sleep off the exhaustion that's been with me ever since we went to Ohop Lake Tuesday and Wednesday to escape the 90 degree weather.
So here I am, blogging from the laptop in the living room so I don't disturb my dear husband's beauty sleep.
We picked cherries today. I borrowed a cherry pitter thingymabob with instructions in German on how to operate it. (Where's Susan when you need her?) Anyway, I figured out why kirsch is called kirsch---ohhh, because it must be the word for "cherry" in German! I hadn't known that before. Apparently if you use this pitter you can stone 10 kg of cherries in one hour. That would be 22 lbs, for us non-metric Americans. Well, in my 45 minutes or so, I managed to do 4 lbs. Nowhere near the 22. :) When I finished with the cherries, I looked like I'd been murdering gophers. I'm thinking it will be a while before the stains on my fingers and thumbs go away!
Tomorrow I need to make/can cherry pie filling. I have never done this before, so it will be An Adventure. 4 lbs will only make 2 qts of filling, so that's not enough to go to all the effort of canning. Fortunately, the man whose cherries we picked also gave me a bunch of cherries from his deep freezer that he'd pitted but never used. So I'm going to thaw them and use those for the remaining filling.
I've got that to do, and get ready for our upcoming trip to California. We're leaving Tuesday morning and driving straight through, with a pit-stop in Portland to a bookstore (OF course), and dinner somewhere between Salem and Eugene. We'll go through the pitiless Sacramento Valley under cover of darkness (the way it's best observed IMHO) and cut over to the coast highway at San Jose for the remainder of the trip. Have to smell the garlic at Gilroy, don't you know, and laugh at the sign that says "It's happening in Soledad!" (When really, nothing happens in Soledad except maybe a lettuce festival?) Okay, forgive me, it's part of the New Wine Country too. Like Santa Maria and surrounding areas has become. What used to be beef is now wine. ANYway, we'll pull into Santa Maria sometime Wednesday morning and turn the grandkids over to the grandparents so we can sleep off the grueling trip. :)
Ah. Sleep. I don't know if I can go there yet. I'll pick up a book and see how far I get before having to put it down. Writing stimulates too much of my brain and keeps me awake. I'll pay the price for this tomorrow, so I'd better post and close the lid here.
Knock-knock
2 weeks ago
10 comments:
going to California hmmm...
we will be in klamath falls 24-28
perhaps a rendez-vous for breakfast,lunch,or dinner?
on your way back home, that is
it's a good idea, but we'll still be down in S. Cal since the kids will be going to summer camp near Barstow & we have to pick them up on the 28th. (We're going to cook them in the Mojave Desert!)
We won't be back through Klamath Falls until the 29th or 30.
LOL okay, what--we live like 10 miles apart if that, and we have to meet in Klamath Falls to get together?! ROFL, SAAAAAD. You and the wife need to come around for dinner. Oh, I got it...we're having the church bbq on August 5 at Clark's Creek #2 at 4 pm...come to that! :)
Oh, I love driving through Gilroy! MMMMMM it always smells so good! =)
yeah... that is pretty funny....
Life gets in the way and all...
the bbq sounds good though, I'll let her know.
I grew up in the Sacramento area - it's not THAT bad! (What's "IMHO"? - I'll probably figure it out after I post this). I won't take too much offense at the Sacramento comment. It is dreadfully hot and not terribly lovely in the depths of summer.
Maybe a place only a native could love?
A day late and a dollar short but I saw a good way to pit cherries on tv yesterday. You need an old coffee percolater and you use the inside minus the coffee holder. They pushed the cheries down on that pipe and pit the cherries . It worked like a charm.
Christy- IMHO= "in my humble opinion" :) do you ever find yourself thinking "LOL" now, due to the advent of netspeak?
Joyce, what a great idea. Was there a lot of cherry left when it was done?
It worked well with the small percolater pipe. There was very little damage to bulk of cherry.
Go to Rachel Ray.com and check double duty tips and there you can see pictures of how it works. I double check this morning.
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