What I've Been Doing...

Canned Pineapple and Pineapple Juice

It all started with a trip to the grocery store. I haven't seen pineapples for under three dollars for over a year...until last week. They were marked two for three dollars! I bought six and for the nine dollars I spent, I ended up with thirteen pints of cubed pineapples, plus three pints of juice by the end of the day! These will taste like liquid gold in the middle of winter. 

Have I told you my favorite fruit is pineapple? My mum told me that she used to eat pineapple every day when she was expecting me. I guess that might have something to do with it.

Monday's Bread Production

Monday is my usual baking day, and yesterday was no exception. This time I made four farmhouse loaves, one asiago cheese loaf (in front), and a small baguette.

Condensed Soup Mixes

While my bread was rising, I mixed up two batches of condensed soup mix. One batch is for condensed cream of mushroom soup, and the other is for condensed tomato soup. Each jar holds the equivalent of eight Campbell's Soup™ cans. These recipes taste almost exactly like the traditional soups. You can't see them, but the mix for the mushroom soup has dehydrates mushrooms and mushroom powder in the jar. It smells wonderful. Likewise, the tomato soup mix has dehydrated tomatoes among the ingredients, and it also smells great.

When I'm ready to use the mix, I've got the directions on the jar for how much mix I need and how to make it. After making the condensed soup, I can either add milk or water to make it soup consistency, or I can add it in condensed form for a casserole or other recipe. 

This sure beats running to the store and filling my pantry shelf with cans. The other benefit is that I can choose organic, non-GMO, or other clean ingredients to feed our family. Worth all the time and effort ten times over, if you ask me. I also have a recipe for cream of chicken soup mix, but didn't have another gallon jar to put it in, so I'll get a few gallon jars and then mix that up, too.

We know there's weather coming this week, so the rest of our weekend was spent preparing. We put away the last of the yard furniture, changed over the mower to bucket and blade on our tractor, and then put up those holiday lights. Truthfully, I had nothing left for the studio after all that.

I work today, so my plan is to work on the bluebird wall hanging tomorrow. I'm looking forward to a little studio time, and know that the next few weeks, I'll be spending whole days upstairs. Right now, I'm "making my list and checking it twice". I'll share more later.