Saturday, September 29, 2007

Is this the '07 salsa?

This weekend we're up in Greenville, Pennsylvania with Beth's family. We didn't plan for this weekend to be salsa weekend, but it became it! It's actually been two years since the last batch. While the 2006 tomato harvest didn't give us enough good tomatoes for the famous Meyer family salsa, 2007 crept up on us unexpectedly. The local tomato harvest was good, and when Fanny, the Amish cleaning lady, showed up yesterday with huge bushels of perfect tomatoes, the 2007 batch was born.

All the other ingredients fell into place, such as jars...

...and garlic.
We chopped the onions and peppers the night before. We had to set up fans in the kitchen because of all the onion vapors.
Blanching the tomatoes...
Peeling and chopping the tomatoes...
...until we have buckets of them!
Boiling (these are only 4 of the 6 total pots we made).
Canning in progress...
And the final product! The total came out to about 60 quarts of salsa. The 8 jars at the far end of the line are quarts of tomato juice. We filtered and boiled all the juice we collected from chopping, and saved it for future soups, etc.
Oh, and THEN we started on the chutney...

We'll let you know how the '07 batch turns out!

Sunday, September 23, 2007

A fun video for you



This is a short video I made for our good friend and fellow Goose Jacqui Hoke. I found an expert who had met her, so I interviewed him.

Thursday, September 06, 2007

What's Going On in There?


Here's Maeby and Lindy (our friends Jack and Christina's dog, who we're dogsitting for a spell) peeking in the back door to see what's happening in the kitchen.

So it's been since late July that we've written anything on this blog, and I thought I'd write a little something. As of August 25th we've been moved into our new house. Expect pictures and/or a video explaining the house soon! The place is looking great overall, and again we have to thank all of our wonderful friends and family who offered spiritual and physical help in putting the place together (we're still tempted to call Ryan to ask where things are in the kitchen - he put it together). Already we've hosted our friend Zach over the Labor Day weekend; he tried out the guest bedroom and dubbed it worthy (hint hint). We were all surprised by the visit of our other friend Morgan over the weekend as well.

Job-wise, I have begun working full time again at Ohio State for the Theatre Department. For those who don't know, I was hired back by the Department as the Administrator and Lecturer for the Introduction to Theatre program. It's a large course (the largest on campus, I think) that involves two lecturers and nine graduate teaching assistants to handle it. In addition, I'm directing a short play called English Therapy for the Department, and may be teaching some extra classes in the winter or spring.

Beth is continuing her work for Paul Robinett's Aromatherapy Candles and Renetto, LLC (the canopy chair company). She's coming off a very busy summer, which saw the candles picked up by Bloomingdale's and the the canopy chair featured on Slate.com and MSN.com. However, she is now aided by our good friend Karl Boettcher, who recently left his job at J.P Morgan Chase to become Operations Manager of the candle shop and canopy chair businesses. Nothing like working with your friends! They're now headed into a busy fall and busier holiday season (to give you a sense of it all... 2007 sales have doubled the 2006 numbers nearly every month, so imagine what these upcoming holidays will be like!).

Right now we're still settling in and tweaking the house: doing some landscaping, organizing rooms, throwing things away, setting up the music room (aka the basement). We're looking forward to cooler weather, when we can turn off the AC and put the screen in the front door. We can't wait for mornings of coffee on the front porch, apple picking, pumpkin everything, walks in our new park with Maeby.

Hope everyone's well!