Tag: postaday2011

Posted in Blessings of Habit, Good ol' days, Health, Homemaking, Photos, Recipes

Pear Butter

Posted on by Katharine
Pears
Bumper Crop

Oh, to bring back the days of sweet, crunchy pears! What memories of delicious fruit we would have forever!

We cannot bring them back, but we can prolong those days by helping the harvest last longer, by canning those pears.

If you are coming into the lovely problem of too many pears, here is how we deal with them–mmm!

1. Core and remove stems, but do not peel pears. Remove bad spots. Drop into 1 gallon water with 1 vitamin C tablet crushed in it.
2. Drain pears. Bring to boil in non-reactive pan (stainless steel or enamel) over medium heat with 1/2″ fresh water in covered pan.
3. Allow pears in water to simmer, stirring,  until fruit is soft, adding water if necessary, to prevent scorching.
4. Mash pears or press through colander.
5. Return pulp to pan and season to taste with brown sugar, and if desired, cinnamon.
6. Reheat until simmering and hold at simmering for a few minutes. Keep at simmering, stirring, during entire process. Add water if needed.
7. Meanwhile, estimate number of pint or smaller canning jars you will need to contain all the pear butter. Wash carefully and rinse these jars. Count the same number of canning lids (flats) and heat in small saucepan of water as directed on box. Set aside and keep hot. Be sure to have one screw band for each lid. Lay one or two jars down in another large pan with 2″ water in it. Cover and bring to boil. Bring to boil another covered pan large enough to hold all the jars at once, with water enough to cover all the jars and rack in bottom of pan to keep jars from direct contact with bottom. (This pan should be a bit larger than your largest burner, and at leat 16″ tall, like a spaghetti boiler. The perfect pan is often called a “water bath canner”. If you lack a lid, a pizza pan works fine.)
8. Using jar lifter, carefully remove one jar from boiling water, emptying into boiling pan, and set it upright onto thick towelling.
9. Using canning funnel and long-handled measuring cup, carefully ladle simmering pear sauce into jar, within 1/2″ of top. Wipe rim clean and dry. Remove flat from hot water with tines of fork. Apply flat and screw band to filled jar, using thick towel to protect hands from heat. Use jar lifter to set lidded jar into tall pan of boiling water.
10. Repeat until all sauce is in jars, in boiling water bath. Time boiling from this time, for 15 minutes. Remove jars and set on clean, DRY towelling. Cover with light towel and allow to cool away from drafts. Do not disturb until completely cooled.
11. Remove screw bands from all sealed jars. (Sealed jars will be indented on top.) Place any unsealed jars in refrigerator and use very soon. Place all others in cool, dark place to keep for at least a year and use whenever you miss those crunchy pears!

We use this in place of jam on buttered toast.

Sometimes I only add white sugar and no spices to this recipe and we eat it like applesauce. Sometimes the pears are so sweet, I skip the sugar, too.

It’s all good!

I do hope these directions were clear. I ‘d be happy to answer all questions here. Remember, the only dumb question is the unspoken one! 🙂

Posted in Believe it or not!, Blessings of Habit, Inspiring, Pre-schoolers, Sayings, Who's the mom here?, Wisdom

A New Kind of Countdown . . .

Posted on by Katharine

Do you “count” you kids down?

You know, you tell them to do something and they don’t do it.

So you say, “One . . . ”

The implication is that you have told them once and you are keeping track, so you must really mean it. Or something.

Then you tell them again, and you say, “That’s two,” a bit more firmly.

Then you tell them again, and you say,  “Don’t make me get out of this chair!” They yawn.

And the countdown begins again.

The children learn they do not have to do anything you say because what you say does not really mean anything at all, and your frustration level escalates.

Well, I was at a craft show this weekend and met a lady who “counts” her grandsons and it is all different. I liked it.

She has taught these two boys to repeat a chant with her. It goes like this:

–Grandmother: One.

–Grandsons: One–I am going a wrong way.

—Grandmother: Two.

—Grandsons: Two–I need to find a different way.

You may wonder where the expected “three” is. On “three” she gets out of her chair. That’s one reason this method works.

(However, as a child, I am sure I would have been saying inside myself, “Three–I need to get OUT of the way!”)

As I observed these boys I marvelled. They had been without Mom for a week and were at a boring craft fair where it was not appropriate for them to do anything. They shared one toy truck and played on the ground with it.

When one boy decided to drive the truck on the sidewalk, Grandmother perceived he was causing a tripping hazard for the shoppers. So she told him to stop and return to the grassy places where her tent was.

He did this only briefly, then strayed to the sidewalk again.

Then she said, “One.”

He replied, “One–I am going a wrong way,” and he sighed, returning to the grass.

In less than a minute his toy truck had strayed again. And Grandmother said, “Two.”

He answered, “Two–I need to find a different way.” Then my jaw dropped, I am sure, as he calmly walked over to his brother, handed him the toy, and wryly said, “See if you can keep this thing off the sidewalk. I can’t.”

I imagine these two little guys, someday at age 35 or so, filling out a tax form or zipping down a highway, temped to “forget” some benefit or accelerate too much, and hearing Grandmother say to them, through the ages, “One . . . “

Posted in Believe it or not!, Blessings of Habit, Health, Photos, Womanhood

DRAMA QUEENS!

Posted on by Katharine

Mostly I will allow these shots to speak for themselves.

I don’t know where you live, but if you know anything about wasps, which is what the large creature is, here, you know that anything smaller than a wasp that can make a wasp act terrified, is a force to be dealt with.

I dealt with them both.

But look!

Trying to Escape
Trying to Escape

What you see here is a large, round, brown planter beside a smaller, rectangular, gray planter, with a large black wasp caught in a black widow web. It is she, herself, also visible, moving in. Can you see her red dots?

Closing In!
Closing In!

Sorry I couldn’t stage these better. Uncooperative subjects! The widow is obvious unafraid; not so, the wasp.

Just like that, the wasp is dead.
Just like that, the wasp is dead.

Based on the size of it, the wasp may have been a queen? Makes a good story: One queen defeats another.

"I'll wrap this up later..."
“I’ll wrap this up later…”

It’s that time of year, when we remember we are surrounded, here, with large and dangerous beasts. Always, stay at least four feet from a black widow spider because it is a jumping spider and is fearless.

Well, almost fearless. I used a zoom function to get this seemingly close. At first she was put off by my flash, but she got over it.

And always, ALWAYS go immediately to a hospital if a black widow spider bites you. They may not give you anti-venom, but they will know what to do and you will need close observation for at least two days. A black widow spider bite can kill a full-grown man in about 4 hours. Do not think you are an exception.

As a clue, besides the obvious red marking on a shiny black spider, the web is tough and of no apparent pattern, as if the weaver were drunk. It makes an audible tearing sound if you tear it, because it is such a tough web. They prefer undisturbed places, which our front porch has become, since it’s been so hot around here.

Time to sweep!

Posted in Believe it or not!, Photos, Womanhood

The Time I Got Lost at Church

Posted on by Katharine
The 142-metre-long (155 yards) Potemkin Stairs...
Well--it wasn't quite this big . . .

It was our first time there.

It was big.

We had to park a block away and climb a long flight of stairs just to get in.

But it was good. Really good preaching.

Then the baby needed whatever babies seem always to need when you really want to stay seated in church.

And I made the trek to the nursery, aided by the aides in the hallways. You see, this church really was big. Several stories high and took up a whole block. Just the building.

However, after going down two hallways, down the elevator, and down two more hallways, nursing the baby, and changing the baby, with my geographically challenged mind–I could not find my way back to the sanctuary.

Could. Not.

I also could not find any of the illustrious hallway aides I had used to get so far away from my family. Although I knew not where I was, nor where I needed to go, I could sort of tell where I was going: in circles.

Finally I spied an aide and gave him that sad-puppy look. He asked me if I needed help.

“I’m lost,” I told him.

He raised one eyebrow and shifted his posture.

Oh, no. I didn’t mean that. Not in a Baptist church. Not that kind of lost!

“I mean–I’m saved!–but I can’t find my way back from the nursery to the sanctuary.”

Practically a slide show of faces slid over his face: relief, disappointment, trying-not-to-laugh, sureness.

And he led me, personally, to the place I needed to be, which I was very much farther from than I thought.

And we decided that although it was an extremely pleasant church, we really were more the little church type.