Let the Sauce Making Commence

The house was very quiet after everyone left yesterday morning. However, my to-do list was full of post-wedding tasks, so I got right to work. I stripped beds and washed bedding, got sewing supplies out of the closets where they had been stashed to make room for guests, cleaned out refrigerators and consolidated food containers (I do not have to cook dinner for several days, which is heavenly), and brought a wheelbarrow load of bagged, frozen tomatoes over from the freezer in the garage. They cooked down on the stove all afternoon:

I am such a lazy canner. I put my whole frozen tomatoes into big pots, cook them down into a thick mass, then run the mixture through the Victorio food mill. The tomato pulp and a bit of juice gets canned for sauce. The skins go to the chickens, who love tomato sauce season very much. I’ve done it this way for years and it’s an efficient system for me. I don’t season the sauce until I am ready to use it; that way, I can make lots of different dishes with it.

After these tomatoes had cooked down some, I transferred them to the roaster to simmer overnight and put another batch in the pots to thaw. Those are cooking down now. I’ll do a canning run of sauce this afternoon. The big canner holds 14 quarts and I can do another seven quarts in my smaller canner. If I hustle, I might be able to get all the sauce made this week, which is good as we’re running low. And we’ll need that freezer space eventually.

The local news station posted an ominous warning on Facebook yesterday that “Tuesday is the last day to winterize!” Winter seems to be starting off with a bang here, with no signs of letting up. More snow and cold is forecast for today and again this weekend. In addition to starting sauce yesterday, I also filled the wood box, put the flannel sheets on our bed, moved the insulated curtains to the living room windows, and cut out the face fabric for another curtain. I picked up a not-quite-a-full-yard remnant of a pretty 108” wide fabric at Joanns the other day. At only 33” inches long, It wasn’t long enough to get two face fabric pieces from it for two curtains, but it was long enough to slice it vertically down the middle and sew the two halves together horizontally to make a face fabric piece for one curtain. I even matched the print across the seam. The spare bedroom has only one window, so it will go there.

I am having some difficulty finding more 108” fabric. Joanns—both online and the Kalispell store—seems to be sold out of the colors I need. I went to Fabric.com and ordered there, instead. We still have the old insulated curtains to use until I get the new ones finished, but the new ones are a huge improvement, both aesthetically and functionally. Joanns did have some gray Kona remnants, so I cut out more masks in preparation for a marathon mask-making session.

I am almost finished with that little embroidery piece I was working on last week. It’s time to cut out pieces for the Squash Squad blocks. I am also waiting for the quilt store in Spokane to send out the supply list for our class in November so I can start collecting what I need.

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The local HVAC company got the heating system installed in the husband’s shop on Monday, and the local propane company came out to install the tank yesterday. This is a new company that has expanded into our area from Missoula. They would very much like to have our business as we have two 1000-gallon tanks for the house, a 500-gallon tank for the shop and another for the rental house, and a 250-gallon tank for the greenhouse. And we own all of them, which allows us to get our propane from whatever supplier has the best price. I had the house tanks filled in May. Those will last a year, so hopefully by next spring, all the tanks will be on roughly the same schedule.

I get such a giggle out of the guys who come to work on the husband’s shop. You can tell how envious they are that he has such a nice space. Ali came over last night to switch out her snow tires; the husband put the car up on the lift and checked it out to make sure nothing else needed attention. Her little guy (he’s 5) came inside and we watched YouTube videos. He was sitting on the couch, but when the husband got up to go out to the shop, he scooted over to sit in the husband’s recliner and said, contentedly, “Tom’s chair.” Those little boys are fascinated by the husband.