Random Chatter: 7/20/15

An outline because this post is long:

1. Lunchtimes at my house are now amazing
2. House renovations update
3. Flowers
4. Antique store score
5. A question about canning pie filling

At the beginning of the summer, I started letting* my 10yo and 7yo  make “picnic lunches” for the kids, with my suggestions and approval as to what they should fix.

And now, I’m to the point of letting the 6yo and 4yo make their own lunches (and one for the youngest – 3yo) and I really don’t even care what they eat as long as I don’t have to fix it.  The only rule is not too much chocolate.  Their lunch almost always includes fruit and either cheese, peanut butter, or deli meat (protein!); and I get them their vegetables at supper, so I feel like this is a win-win.  It’s incredible to only have to think about two meals a day!

*Letting?  Or suggesting that they should?  Or delaying lunchtime for so long that they begged to get their own food so that they’d actually get something to eat?  My memory is truly a little hazy; I don’t remember exactly how this all got started.

I can’t remember the last update I gave you all on our home renovation project, but lately, our contractor has been working on structural repairs.  We kind of think that the original owners built it themselves and mostly without a plan, figuring things out as they went.  (Which is exactly how I’d build a house, so I’m certainly not faulting them for it.  Jeremy and our contractor might feel differently. ;)

We knew there were structural problems when we bought it – you could look at the main and upper level floors and tell there was some major sagging going on, and as we’ve taken apart the inside of the house for the past two years, we uncovered all sorts of reasons there were structural issues.  (Turns out, it’s not such a good idea to cut through floor trusses to run ductwork and plumbing, and it’s probably wise to transfer the load properly.)  Anyway, so the structural repairs are mostly done and they’re getting started on framing.  Yay!

When people ask me what we’re having done to the house, I usually laugh because most people don’t realize that we’ve taken out all the plumbing, electrical, floors, walls, etc.  We’re down to studs and floorboards, and so we have the equivalent of a framed-in-on-the-outside house, so everything has to be done.

Because we’re using a construction loan to finish the 2/3rds of the house that’s down to studs, we spent the first six months of this year figuring out the floor plan and every single light fixture, plumbing fixture, windows, cabinets, doors, etc.  It was partly fun, but mostly mentally exhausting.  For the things we’ve done for the past couple of years, we’ve just done them as we had the money, so we didn’t necessarily have to have a budget for the overall project, but needed to this time since we’re having a huge chunk done all at once.

We are just ready to be done and think about something other than home renovations!  I’ve been thinking lately about my answer to the question, “Would you do it again?” and I think our answer would be this:

We are really glad we bought the house we did, even with all the work entailed.  As a Realtor, Jeremy sees tons of houses every year and they all start to look the same after awhile,  so we are both excited to have a home that is quite unique.  But, would we do this again, as in a second time?  No way – at least, not as our own residence where we care pretty passionately about every single detail.  We’re ready to do something other than work on the house, or plan for the house, or think about the house, or think about how we should be working on the house on every day off. :)

The wildflowers have been so beautiful this year!  The rain and relatively cool weather must be helping.  Last fall, I spread quite a lot of native Colorado wildflower seeds from BBBSeed and they are starting to bloom!  I’d kind of given up hope that they were going to do anything, but just in the past couple of weeks, we’ve started seeing new flowers in places where we spread seed.  Now, of course, I’m trying to figure out where I can plant flowers that Jeremy won’t want to mow over. :)

AND, the Scarlet Pimpernel seeds that I planted have finally come up and bloomed!  I’d definitely given up hope on these but just noticed they were blooming yesterday!  I really should consider doing seeds the “right” way and planting them indoors and all that, but I’m not sure if I’ll ever have the patience for that.  Well, now I’ll have to listen to the book that made me desperate to have some Scarlet Pimpernel flowers of my own!

I stopped into American Classics Marketplace last week and enjoyed an hour or so of blissful, fun shopping by myself.  I saw these ice skates – complete with wooden guards and a bag – in a booth and the tag said either $10 or $110; I couldn’t tell which!  It looked like the person had written a dollar sign with two lines instead of one, but it was halfway between where it should have been to be a dollar sign line and a digit.  $110 seemed high, and $10 seemed cheap for a “set” like this!  I looked at the vendor’s other tags and some were written with a single-line-dollar-sign and some had double.  Agh!

The booth also happened to be 50% off everything, so I took them up front and they couldn’t decide what the price was supposed to be either, so they called the booth owner and the skates were ten whole dollars!  So with the sale, I got them for $5 and I’m super excited to hang them on a hook in my entryway during winter.  (Yes, I bought them purely for decor – we don’t have a pond!)

I have a canning question if anyone happens to have experienced this same issue.  Last year, I canned some peach pie filling with Clear Gel and didn’t leave enough headspace so the filling oozed out the jars as they cooled.  (They did seal, but obviously not a great one since it had food underneath it, so I kept them in the frig until we used them.)

Then I did blackberry pie filling and made sure to leave the right amount of headspace, and the same thing happened – the filling expanded too much as it cooled, and oozed out.  (I’d also felt like the peach pie filling recipe I used called for way too much Clear Gel (it was pretty goopy), so I cut it back quite a bit for the blackberry pie filling.)

So, this year I determined I was going to figure this out, so I’ve now done peach pie filling and blueberry pie filling and have just been adding small amounts of Clear Gel and cooking it until I felt like it was the right consistency, and then leaving PLENTY of headspace.

Both times, the fillings expanded quite a bit as they cooled, but did not overflow – yay!  But, when they cooled all the way, the fillings were back down to where they’d been when I started, which is a couple of inches below the rim of the jar.

Is that normal for pie filling?  I don’t have expansion/head space issues with anything else, but the pie filling thing mystifies me.  Surely there’s a way to have a finished jar where the filling is closer to the top but without overflowing?  Or are all the magazine photos of beautiful jars of pie filling lying to me?

I can’t help but think this somehow relates to either the Clear Gel (because using that is the only time I’ve ever had these issues) or altitude.  Does anyone have a solution?