Finding Peace in Nature When Cox Customer Service Makes You Want to Strangle Someone

I had a really nice weekend. (I would say "we", but Eric spent much of the weekend working on the fence construction, so I'm not sure he would so enthusiastically make such a claim.)

On Friday, we started our weekend off on a delicious foot (wait, maybe that's not the best way to phrase that) by making stuffed peppers with three of the 60 peppers we pulled out the garden the previous weekend. We used this recipe, but substituted quinoa for the rice (because that's what we had on hand), used tomatoes from our garden, and didn't add any tomato paste. It didn't matter - they were delicious! Great job, Eric!

Early Saturday morning the air was crisp and cool and the sun was shining so I decided to start the day by taking a dip in our hot tub! Daytime dipping, for me, is even more enjoyable than soaking in it at night...It was blissful!

I had planned to make several stops around town on my bike that morning, but found it in the shed with two flat tires. This was especially upsetting given that I paid somewhere around $100 to have it tuned up (and more) earlier this year. I brought it up to the gas station and only then did I notice that one of the air valves was jammed into the wheel itself. I kicked and pulled at the tire to try to get it out (giving the guys standing outside the station something to stare at, I'm sure) but it wouldn't pop out. Fantastic. With the back tire inflated, I was able to ride home (all down hill) but then ended up taking out my car to run my errands.

The Falls Church farmer's market was crowded, as always. I placed my order for a crepe but instead of standing idly by to wait for it, I walked over to Toigo Orchards' stand and bought peaches that would be used later that day to make jam! (Who knew that you could reach 3 lbs. of peaches with only 5 pieces of fruit?! Wow, those were some huge peaches.)

Peach with granola - excellent, but not as good as the banana/coconut/Nutella crepe!

Some more photos from the market:

I tried to erase the apostrophe in "Cheddar's" for them
but it seemed to be written in permanent marker. *sigh*

When I returned home with the preserving jars that I purchased at our local hardware store, I was able to make my first batch of jam! It took me a full three hours, but I blame much of that on it being my first attempt. Hopefully (dear sweet Jebus, HOPEFULLY) in the future things will go a bit (okay, A LOT) faster...

Here are all of the ingredients. Yes, that's two pounds of sugar. TWO POUNDS. (0.9 kg!)

The first step was to make some pectin because peaches are a low-pectin fruit. Yes, you can buy packets of pectin at the store, but I wanted to follow the instructions that we got in class last weekend - and I'm a fan of doing things as naturally as possible.

Pectin can be made naturally by chopping up apples (3) and a lemon (seeds and all), adding 1 cup of water, and then cooking it down. After you strain it, the resulting liquid (about 1 cup) is for 3 pounds of peaches. You add it to the diced up peaches and the cook that mixture for about 15 minutes (although I cooked it longer because I wasn't sure if it was ready for the next step).

Then you add the sugar (have I mentioned: TWO POUNDS?!?), along with 1 tsp of salt and 2 tsp of freshly grated ginger. Cook it until it reaches the "gel point" - which there are many ways of testing. If your mixture doesn't have enough pectin in it, it won't properly gel, but that's okay - a loose fruit mixture can still be used as jam and works fabulously drizzled over ice cream!

<-- Cooking peaches, sugar, salt and ginger

My mixture did gel, and although perhaps not as firmly as store-bought jams, I have to say: it tastes really damn good!

Extra bonus: I made just enough for the jars that I had "sterilized"! (I say "sterilized" because they're not actually sterile - they just as clean as is desired for preserving food. As my instructor at Hill's Kitchen said: we're not doing open heart surgery here, people!)

You know you want some.

Once I was done, it was time for Tater's walk which I knew he would never forgive me for if I jipped him (walks - and dinner - are the best parts of his days!), so off we went. We spent a few minutes at the dog park and then walked down the path along Four Mile Run. Tater went into the water for a moment and I was able to catch the moment with the camera that I'd brought along. Such a handsome pup!

And that was just Saturday - whew! 

Sunday I enjoyed my morning by sitting on the deck, eating English muffins with peach-ginger jam, sipping tea and reading the paper. Then I went into the yard and took down the tomato plant bed. Now the only surviving piece of the garden is our pumpkin patch with three gourds that are almost ready to come inside and become baked goods.

We finished up the weekend the way we started it: with a dip in the hot tub and followed by cooking up some pepper slices (to top the free pizza we got from Flippin' Pizza). Fabulous!

(More on why we hate Cox tomorrow.)