PEACHES & WELCOME HOME ALEX!

MONDAY:
This spring, a man who drives a truck load of oranges (Indian River Direct) came every three or four weeks to our area.  He is now bringing Peaches from Georgia.  He parks at the Clor's restaurant and sells out of his truck.  Betsy and I spotted him on Saturday when we were out and about doing errands.  We bought a 1/2 bushel.   We had to let them sit to ripen a day or more. 




WAITING FOR THEM TO RIPEN!

In the sizzling heat wave, I cranked up the upstairs air conditioner, and made a peach pie.   Now don't throw away those cook books ladies, as you age, you doubt yourself and need to refresh your mind  on ingredients.   I followed the recipe plus I added a touch of cinnamon and the pie turned out delicious!  The family could care less about what I made for supper; it was let's have pie!



SO GOOD!

After our supper, Betsy wanted to make peach jam, she had picked up the Sure Jell and Pectin on her last shopping trip.   She read the directions several times on both products.  I have never used Pectin.
She decided to go with the Pectin as you can adjust the amount needed by how many cups of fruit that you have ready.  She followed the directions and cooked it.  She ladled it into jars and I cleaned the rim and put the caps on.  It was jell-ing as she ladled it.  Then she insisted that we put it in the water bath canner.  I never ever put jelly thru that step.  When the time was up and jars removed, I noticed that the fruit pieces were evenly distributed in some of the jars; that's a desired product!  I guess your never too old to learn!



FIRST BATCH-GOOD JOB.  (CUP &HALF JARS)

 In between all this cooking, I was called outside to help Bob check the lights on the motor home as he had an appointment for inspection bright and early Tuesday morning.  He didn't want to pay the garage to fix lights that didn't work.
Many of the photographers pictures from Ride For Roswell are now on the Flickr web site, so we went thru many of those albums looking for Team Annalynn members on the computer for the rest of the evening.
TUESDAY:
I helped Bob back the motor home out at 7:30am so he could go to the garage.  It passed inspection  and a grease job was done. Then he drove to Skyline to have the refrig recall (3rd time) done again.  So now we are already to travel.
I posted all the June cash receipts into Quicken.  It's a fruitless effort.  It's so busy in the summer, we never print the budget pages to evaluate if we stayed on budget.  Kinda dumb!  Well, at least they are in there so we can look up stuff when needed. 
I did some ironing and by lunch time Bob was back.  After eating, he took a nap and I sat down to read.  I fell asleep and dropped my e-reader.  It still works.
Supper time we had chicken on the grill, fresh cukes and fried yellow squash.  I coat the squash with Bisquick and fry it.  It is so good that way.  After supper more peaches were ripe so  Betsy and I put up more peach jam and 6 pints of sliced peaches.  It was so stinking hot in the kitchen, even with the air conditioner.   We didn't make spaghetti sauce this past weekend because it was to hot and here we are canning.  No sense to that.
WEDNESDAY:
I dusted and picked up our bedroom while it was cool in there.  I still have to use the vacuum in there to finish. 
In the afternoon, we went to K-Mart to buy canning jars.  I decided that I didn't want sliced peaches in the quart containers as we don't need that much for a meal now.   I must have 8 dozen quart jars in the shed.   I found some wide mouth pints that should work just fine.  Once home I washed the jars and had them all ready for scalding when Betsy and I started in again.

I had promised to bring an apple cookie sheet pie to our son's house tomorrow night when we have pizza & wings to welcome Alex home from boot camp.   So Betsy started peeling the apples and I quartered them and she made the pie crust.  We put that in the oven while we finished the last batch of peaches.  Now that really heated up the kitchen!  The famous last word, "I'm telling you right now Mom, we are not buying another bushel this weekend!"  




COOKIE SHEET APPLE PIE



WE LOVE SLICED PEACHES  ON COTTAGE CHEESE!  VERY GOOD.

 THURSDAY:
We left the kitchen in a mess last night as it was so hot; so that's the first thing I did this morning.  Clean jars, clean the canner pot, pack the jars in boxes, and I tried to clean the oven from the pie run over.  The oven is a big mess as I wanted to be sure the bottom crust was done and left it in 10 minutes longer and it boiled over.   I didn't think a 1/2 bushel of peaches would go so far.  We ended up with 15 pints of sliced peaches and 16 jars of jam.  We have already eaten one jar of jam with Ritz crackers and our toast.  Yumm!  My AHA moment; I can see the top of the dinning room table again!




DONATED FROM CAMPING WORLD

After lunch, we drove to Camping World to pick up the promised donations.  The manager had a grocery cart full of items.  He gave us 500 plastic bags (for the welcome or goody bags) 31 foam cooler cups, 31 Woodalls bags (material) 8- 1.2 ltr. cooler thermos, and a camping chair with a lift up tray.  We were so surprised.  That will help our auction for the HRRVC Scholarship fund.  On the way there the  farmers were cutting fields of wheat; the  fields were such a beautiful golden color.

At 5:00 pm we drove to Zirbel's garage to meet Betsy as she was leaving her car for repair and then from there she drove our car to the airport to be with the family to welcome home Alex.  Alex has been at ROTC Air Force camp since June 6th, in Alabama and Mississippi.    He was an instructor this year and had a platoon of 25 cadets.



ALEX: HE'S HOME!



HUGS & KISSES



HE IS VERY TIRED-UP AT 4:00 AM!



AT THEIR HOUSE: ROCKY, ERIC & BETSY



ALEX & HIS FRIEND JAY. 

 He did not wear his uniform home this time, I guess enough is enough!  Next year he has earned a spot to go to flight school.  He has wanted to be a pilot since he was 8 years old.  He took several flying lessons before he could drive a car!  In August he has to go to Ohio to an air force base for 3 day physical and pass before his dreams come true!   We all drove to our son's house for pizza & wings and dessert.  Alex showed us his photos, earned badges and Commemorative  coin.   We are so proud of him.  Once home we let the dog out and then headed for bed.  It was a full day for us old farts!
FRIDAY:
I'm having my coffee on the porch; and there goes the farmer in the back field planting something.  We thought it was planted last week but yesterday two tractors were out there fitting the ground-dust blowing everywhere again.  Must be a quick crop or it's winter wheat as it's so late.
I did several things on the computer and then I printed many photos that I wanted done. 
My friend, MO, came over and we spent the afternoon in the pool!  The water was 86o and you could just walk right in with no shivers.  Beautifoool!
Betsy picked up Bob and they drove to Zirbel's to pick up Betsy's car.  

SATURDAY:
Late start to the day as I didn't get to sleep until wee hours this morning.  Wonder if the moon has anything to do with my sleepless nights?  Once I got moving, I cleaned like a house on fire!   Bob wanted to go over to the casino as we had to activate our name cards today,  in order to be in on the drawing for the big Harley motorcycle.  So we did that and then came home to swim.  We picked up some Clor's chicken bar b que for our supper.  The drawing is tonight at 10:00 pm and you have to be present to win.  So we will go out about 9:30 pm (like the kids do)  and see if we can get in the casino to watch.  Notice I don't have much hope of winning.  Sure didn't win anything on the machines this afternoon, after all their in the business to make money.
We arrived at the Downs and they had just called names for the cash give away.   So we walked around until we found machines to sit at and play.  It was very crowded!  Some lady won $1185.63 on the machine two down from Bob.  There was hooting and hollering excitement.   I finally won $65.00 but between the two of us, we were still in the hole!   When the drawing for the motorcycle was announced we went up front to watch.  Three names were called before someone was present to claim it.  It just wasn't meant to be for us.  We came home and ate a Buster Bar! 
SUNDAY:
My day was spent getting ready and attending a Bridal Shower for a granddaughter of a very good friend.  It was held in a park building, no air conditioning.  Everything was very nice, the attendants put alot of work into it but I couldn't help thinking about going home to swim. 

That's it for this week.  Thanks for clicking in.  Have a good week making memories!

Golden Gram