When 29 degrees is the high for your day...

 You make soup. And you can soup. And since onions were 69 cents for a three pound bag and you bought 7 bags...well, you make French Onion Soup.  lol  7 quarts are in the canner as we speak.  That's plenty to have on the shelf. and then because I have more beef broth than onions, I am making more soup for supper (and a boule of bread) and may wind up canning beef broth. We'll see how much is left. I cut up about 6 onions to make a small batch for us.  We do love FOS...

  Yesterday I canned pork loin again. Got some beautiful meat on sale for 1.69/lb. I bought 2 whole loins--one smaller one bigger. The small one I made a Caribbean Stew and froze 3 packages of 6 each boneless pork chops. The other one was a perfect 7 quarts of chunks of canned pork in one and a half pint sized jars.  Winner winner chicken dinner.

  The weather turned cold fast and we had about a week of absolutely stunning tree action. Here are some pictures of that... just a couple, I promise..

 

Is Mother Nature crazy beautiful...or what ??

I have been kind of down for the count this past week, just recuperating from the wedding stuff and grieving  some over a friend of mine that died. Another friend has been given a year or less to live (cancer diagnosis).  Life is pressing down on me 

some days.  When that happens, my tendency is to hunker down at home and do the things that soothe my soul.  Stocking my pantry, cooking for my family, loving on my critters. For 3 days now I have been meaning (sort of) to get to the grocery store  and pick up a few things, but I still haven't done it. I will be in town tomorrow and it's nothing that can't wait til then. Not like we're gonna starve around here.   lol

I have some bread in the kitchen raising that should be about ready to make into rounds for the second rise.  It will be really good with the soup for supper. And I just found a recipe for Cherry Bars (I have cherry pie filling in the pantry)  that I'm going to make for desert. Himself comes home really hungry on these cold days as much of his work is outside.  The bars have a shortbread like base, with filling spread over it and extra dough dropped in spoonfuls on the top. Then a drizzle glaze, which I probably won't do. Sounds good though, and that boy does love cherry stuff.  

OK. It's about 20 minutes til the soup comes out of the canner. Then the dessert will bake and lastly the bread, so that it comes out of the oven and is warm, slathered with real butter to go with the soup. We usually eat around 6, so that gives me 3 hours to get these things done and hopefully get in the shower, since I didn't fit that into my busy morning schedule. lol   Weather is supposed to move back up into the 40's in the coming days, and stay in the high 40's and low 50's. That will be perfect fall weather. Warm enough to get some outside work done and cool enough to almost enjoy doing it. lol 

  I'm off to the kitchen...the bread awaits me....