Here we are in the first week of 2020, and what do I have to show for it? Honestly we've done a LOT, but if certainly doesn't feel or look like it at my house. We've been doing or fixing something every day this year, it seems, but the house is still a huge mess. Check out my living room. Kind of looks like I've got some dead bodies laying in the middle of the floor.
That's just my Christmas tree though, no dead bodies this time! I managed to get all of our decor down and put away except for the tree, which I JUST got taken apart and put into the bags yesterday. I was dead tired last night, though, so there they sit.
The reason I was so tired was because of this:
Or rather, these:
We dropped by the Amish bulk store on the way home from Chad's parents' house to pick up a gallon of molasses (for $10! Can you believe that!), and they had bushels of apples for
$5. Five dollars! How could I resist? Yes, I know I already have about 20 quart jars of applesauce in my basement, and yes I know we just finished eating the apples I bought in October, and yes I know we're kind of tired of eating apples by this point. But Five Dollars. Besides, they were my two of my favorite kinds of apples, Macouns and Empires.
And anyway, my mom never got any applesauce this year because I was too busy taking care of her in October/November/December to make her any. Now she's got 6 quarts of sauce to get her through the winter.
The top picture is a new recipe I tried. It's apple pie filling. We don't eat a lot of sugar, but I was getting pretty tired of applesauce and wanted to try something different. It only calls for 1/2 cup sugar per quart, and I figure I can find a way to decrease that in the future. We also don't eat a lot of pies, but I figure I can make crisps or muffins or something with the pie filling. If nothing else, we can crack one open and make Hobo pies in the summer around the campfire!
Why else am I so tired? Well, on New Year's Day, we went over to Chad's folks' and had our traditional pork and sauerkraut (except it was ham this year, and actually come to think of it, his mom forgot to get out the sauerkraut. Oh well). Except Chad was helping his dad reattach their cupboards that were falling off the wall. Meanwhile, I realized I had left my bag (wallet, money, credit cards, and phone included) at the coffee shop earlier in the day. We spent the entire day worried sick out of our minds about it, but thankfully it was unmolested and I got it back the next morning. That made me feel better about humanity!
Chad and his dad didn't finish with their project on New Year's, so we had to go back on Saturday to finish up. We wanted to get that done because we had our own problem! Our freezer was leaking water, and suffice it to say that it needed a new part. Since we're trying to save money to buy a home in the country, we've been trying to do all of our own repairs when possible, so Chad ordered the $18 part and he got to work on it.
It took him about 4 hours, but he got it done! Yay! Also, the freezer is cleaner than it's been in years.
In other news, I've got two week old lettuce babies in my Aerogarden, happily growing away.
I've decided that, with all of the outbreaks of salmonella and e-coli in lettuce (especially romaine, which is my favorite), I'm no longer buying lettuce in the store. I'll only eat lettuce that we grow ourselves, which works pretty well in the summer but is a little harder to do when it looks like this outside.
But it's closing in on 4pm, and I need to get some laundry in the drying and get dinner going, so I'd better wrap this up! I hope you're all having a wonderful week and a blessed 2020 so far!
