The Freckled Diaries

Libraries and Autumn

They're just best of friends.  I wish I could just upload the sensory perfection and the sheer bliss that has been the past several days. I've spent much of my time since Saturday at either the Library of Congress or Catholic's library.  Saturday afternoon was passed here:

The Library of Congress's Main Reading Room.  Literally right there, too.  At the seat just in front of the second column from the right.  Not a good seat at all, actually.  Too close to the traffic coming in and out (see the aisle), and too close to the laptop users (they are on the other side of that aisle). Seeing as how I'm extremely noise-sensitive, even the whispered conversations between the librarians and patrons and the clicky clack from the laptop section were a bit much.  Oh and that seat is in direct line of sight of the tourist area and even though they're enclosed in plexiglass, you can still hear their shrieking toddlers and see them milling about, which is only slightly less distracting than the clicky-clack.  I sat there, though, because I needed to keep the late afternoon sun out of my eyes and get the heck away from the scofflaw Georgetown student who had set up her laptop in the non-laptop area. I had half a mind to ask something to be done about it, but I didn't.

Anyway, that was Saturday until 5pm.  Then I was off to Catholic's library to get some books that I could actually check out and then I headed to my aunt and uncle's house for dinner. Walking out of the library, the last of the sun's rays disappearing and casting that clear autumn light onto everything, loafers clicking on the stone steps, cold air nipping at my legs (tweed skirt season!), wind whirling around crispy leaves with an armful of books, the newness of puppy love popping into my head, surprising me over and over again (what exactly IS it about me and fall...aren't we supposed to have spring fever?), the satisfaction of a good day's work well done, and looking forward to a cozy family evening....it just is so wonderfully and stupidly perfect it just shouldn't be legal.

Sunday was an equally lovely day spent with Rebecca and Erin at the Maryland Renaissance Festival, where we ran into no fewer than 7 people we know from Ballyshanners or Gatsby's Tavern or just generally from around Old Town.  The weather was so lovely it should be bottled and sold and we had a great time watching a Shakespeare parody/comedy troupe, semi-stalking a bagpipe band (men in kilts...we've decided that's our favorite way they are packaged), watching a joust, window shopping, and eating fried things on sticks.  Oh and drinking Sam Adams Octoberfest which is really just a wonderful beer.  Came home, car heater working it's sleepy magic but managed to swing by Murphy's to hear about Rebecca's first paying gig (she'd left the Festival early to do a show at Casablanca).  Pat Garvey who is in an apples and oranges type of tie for my favorite pub singer was playing, and I haven't seen him in ages and it was so nice to hear him sing again--especially those songs that only he does.

Monday was a sleepy kind of day but it involved more Catholic library which wasn't so blissful this time around (mainly because the research topic is a little frustrating) but then there was pub trivia.  We got our asses handed to us but it's alright.  We had fun.  Today was more Library of Congress which is really just my favorite place on earth (Newspaper and Periodicals Reading Room this time) and then to Catholic for a midterm which I think I did pretty well on.

Phew.  So that's life.  Libraries and autumn pretty much.  

Agenda (besides unpacking): buy pumpkins, carve, cook, toast seeds.  Buy firewood (I'm on the hunt for applewood--burns cleaner and smells so sweet), have fire.  Sit in big comfy chair, drink apple tea, read copious amounts of books (preferably with kitty in lap, dependent on feline cooperation).  Coziness index will be through the roof.

Oh, and PS, a little schadenfreude to fall asleep by. They're having trouble renting out my old place.  They just had to drop the price.  It would be amusing if they have to cut it to below what I was paying (economy having tanked and all). They're already out one full month's rent that I happily would have paid in full (and early, as always).  It doesn't seem hugely likely that they'll get someone by Nov 1 so that will be more than a month's rent by then.  And they have the nerve to claim that *I* have cost them "thousands of dollars" (patently untrue--the only person to move out over the alleged smoking--his apartment was rented out almost immediately upon his departure).  They've just cost themselves a sum in the four figures, plus the time spent advertising and showing the place.  The bullet couldn't have hit the foot more squarely if they'd tried.

AWOL

On Thursday afternoon as I was finishing up some errands I realized that earlier in the day I'd finished my work for the week and that I had no responsibilities until Tuesday when classes started up again so I went up to visit my family.

It's nice being so close to "home" (it's strange to think of Philadelphia as home now that I haven't lived there since the 90s) so that these sorts of impulse visits, or casual trips are possible.  We didn't do too terribly much, but you don't need to when visiting family.  

My mother was always a pretty serious gardener and would can or otherwise preserve her bounty in the summer months (which I think is part of the reason that my home food preservation efforts don't seem as insane to me as they do to other people) but she has scaled back in recent years, mainly since she broke her back last year.  But since I've been getting into it, and she always enjoyed it, we decided to do some projects this weekend.  Unlike Northern Virginia, Southeastern Pennsylvania still has a good bit of land that hasn't been paved and McMansioned over and this land is amazingly close to highly developed areas and is still used as small scale, family type farms.  I'm not sure how that happened but it did and the end result is that with the slightest bit of research it's possible to find several small family farms within a short drive from our house (turns out my dad, an avid road cyclist, passes these places with regularity so they really ARE very close to the house).  

We went to one such place, Pete's Produce, and I was absolutely amazed by the quality, variety and quantity of produce there.  The one local farm (near-ish Vienna)  I've visited around here (and as far as I know, the only one that close to me), while still great totally pales in comparison.  Maybe the soil here is bad, or maybe these Vienna farmers aren't quite as good, or maybe the terrible heat and humidity does have that much of an effect on plants (I've read that spinach doesn't do well here because of the godawful weather) but seriously, Pete's was great.  Bell peppers of a huge variety of color (even purple, which I'd never seen before) and of a "normal" to "large" size (as opposed to my farm's sad puny sizes and a near total lack of anything but green), and just a much greater variety of stuff and lots more of it.  Sigh.

Anyway, we got out of there with a crate of Roma tomatoes (25lbs), 24 bell peppers (green, red, yellow and orange), 3 onions, a "sugar baby" watermelon, a dozen eggs and some homemade salsa.  The tomatoes happened this way: my dad wanted "3 kilos" (why he uses metric I'll never know) to make and preserve a tomato sauce so 7lbs went to him, then my mom and I canned the other 18lbs whole in quart jars.  I now have 4 quarts of whole Roma tomatoes to add to my stash.  But the real story of the weekend was the peppers.  My first attempt at relish is an astounding success and I will be repeating this in the very very near future.

It is amazingly easy and doesn't need to be canned if you're going to use it in the near future. And even if you don't have canning "stuff" you can still can it (you DO need mason jars and lids though).  Here's what to do--I highly recommend it 

Sweet Pepper Relish

If you intend to use it right away, it's all done!  Just refrigerate and enjoy.  I won't hazard a guess as to how long it will last in the fridge but just assume less than normal relish (there's no artificial preservatives in this relish, obviously) but still a fairly decent amount of time as vinegar, sugar and salt are all well known natural food preservatives and, well, you just used quite a bit of all three.

If you want to can this to save for later, just buy pint sized mason jars and run them through the dishwasher (or hand wash with very hot water).  Put the cans in the pot in very hot but not boiling water in a deep pot until you're ready to use them. Put lids and bands into a bowl and pour simmering water over them and allow to stand.  Never boil lids, you'll mess up the seal and it won't seal and you'll give yourself a headache.

Pull out the jar (use tongs or jar grippers), fill with relish, clean and dry rim very well (any little food particle will prevent it from sealing) and put lids and bands on (keep bands "fingertip tight" which means not loose but don't put any effort into making them actually tightened at all). Place back in pot upright (important: use a cooling rack or something similar to keep the jar from touching the bottom of the pot thereby preventing a jar explosion), bring to boil. Make sure jars are covered by 1-2 inches of water. Once the water is boiling, time 5 minutes (the recipe I found called for 5 minutes, other recipes may be longer or shorter).  

Remove from water, let cool.  After 12-24 hours, check to make sure jars sealed by checking the little pop top, and by removing the bands and seeing if you can remove the lid (you shouldn't be able to).  If the lid has sealed and you can't remove it manually, congrats, you just canned relish! If not, you have 24 hours to re-attempt a good seal.

Between 4 of us, we ate a pint in 2 days. On crackers.  It's really very very good :)

Today's Agenda:

Squashes: freezing
Peppers: freezing
Garlic: not sure (the method I want to use is potentially bocchalism-friendly so I'm still weighing my options)
Tomatoes: canning (!)

Of course, because I have all the planning skills of a high schooler I have to go back out and buy lemon juice (for to can the tomatoes, long story there about the changing acidity of our foods) and some larger canning jars.  I have serious spacial awareness issues (or a total lack of attention, who knows) and the ones I bought are so small they're really only suited for jams and jellies, not tomatoes. For reference, I got half-pint jars when I should have gotten quart jars, but they looked big enough in the store!  Serious spacial issues, people!

In other news, my poor mother.  She doesn't read this blog (and I doubt is aware of its existence) but still when I was talking to her this morning and mentioned my attempts at learning to like zucchini, she immediately said "oh, it's all my fault you don't like it, do you remember when....".  This is seriously the first we've talked about it, and it turns out that it was an equally memorable experience for her.  She definitely got the worse end of the deal. For me, I just got an aversion to summer squash but she got twentysomething years of maternal guilt over what was really no big deal in the first place.  She had some zucchini she'd grown herself in the garden and was proud of it and having few friends in the neighborhood, a business traveling husband and only one child she had no way other than me to share her pride.  I was a difficult, annoying, stubborn and picky eater to begin with so I think this aided in the frustration level that ensued. I'm positive it would have if I were the parent. The end result was frustration due to a stubborn preschooler's refusal to even try it, some sort of trick or possibly a shove-in-the-mouth (don't remember that detail), followed swiftly by half-swallowed projectile-squash.  I tried to absolve the guilt this morning (and should have lied about remembering the incident) but that never really works.

But for the record:  I have an awesome mother, zucchini incident or no.  I am not traumatized in any way (by her at least the sea turtles thing is all on my dad), and I am now a summer squash eater so basically: no harm, no foul.  I think a lot of parents out there are in need of that mantra.  If the kid's not damaged, it's as if it never happened!  No worries :)

Long Time!

Goodness a week goes by quickly!  This week I:

Spent a lot of time with my local extended family because (a) I like them and (b) one of my aunts who lives much farther away, and who I seldom see and who I also like was visiting to help my aunt who was recovering from a surgery.

Ordered my laundry stuff, got cool new grocery bags and slacked off on my quest for a bike parking space (but I did get the name and number of a hot lead so at least that's something).

Got a promotion of sorts at work, and offered a very cool second job by my professor (the very same one who I was convinced would fail me because of the whole rough draft debacle) who, it turns out, thinks that I am very smart.  It was good.

Got a million and a half (or, well, six) blood tests performed (I'm fine, no worries...all standard) and fainted in the process.  Turns out I am NOT recovered from my fear of blood and needles like I thought.  I swear I didn't psych myself out either.  I was actually very concerned about another test that was to be done that day, in which I would have to be topless in front of a stranger.  I have totally bizarre nudity/modesty issues.  Like, it's all or nothing. Either I don't give a shit or I'm modest to the extreme, depending on the context and somehow "certified medical professional conducting a normal and necessary medical function" isn't the "right" context for me.  Hey, I never claimed I was sane.  Anyway, I didn't give the blood tests a second thought because I thought I was "over it" because I've gotten several shots in the past several years (boosters, that HPV vaccine, and tons of traveler vaccines) and was fine with them.  I guess injections and blood drawing are different beasts in the eyes of my panic button. 

The second the nurse put that band around my arm, I lost it, from out of nowhere.  Hyperventilating, eyes tearing up, urge to run, etc.  And then I fainted, just a little, he looked at me and said "um, maybe we should do this lying down".  I kept saying (not realizing what I was saying) "I don't want to do this, I don't want to do this" and he listened!  I actually had to instruct him (once I calmed down) to go ahead with the blood drawing.  The real crappy part?  It's been so long since I've had blood drawn that I forgot that the pretty blue vein on my left arm is a liar. No one can get blood out of there. Something about it sliding around or something gross like that. My pasty white right arm is the way to go--can't really see any veins but apparently you can feel them.  So I got stuck several times, and the whole thing was just prolonged and awful.

Also this week I got all psyched up for and watched the LOST finale.  And it was awesome.  Not as awesome as last year's finale, Through the Looking Glass or even this year's The Constant but still quite awesome.  I may start writing about LOST in more detail in here one of these days.

Today I did errands, tried to start planning Alaska (I'm going to Anchorage to visit a friend next week), and slept while avoiding the messy kitchen.

I'll try to write more about LOST and Alaska soon!

She Lives!

I've been off traveling again.  This time it was to South Bend, Indiana for a family reunion of sorts for my mother's side. 

Quick rundown of my family situation:  my father is the 4th born of 10 children and my mother is the 6th born of 9 children.  This basically means that I have a very significant number of relatives.  Just plain old aunts, uncles and cousins (first cousins) is a significant number--I've never really met (aside from hey, this is so-and-so at a wedding) any great-uncles, or second-cousins or anything complicated like that. Those sorts of relatives number in the triple digits I'm sure because my grandparents also came from families with 8+ children, most of whom then had 8+ children, etc.  I had to do this for a school project once, trace my family tree back 3 generations (grandparents' siblings and their families).  It was madness.

Anyway, it was a fun week and pictures will go up as soon as my lazy sister emails them to me (did you hear me, Suzanne?).  Many of my cousins have children and we had at the house (most days) little girls aged 8, 6, 4, 3, 2 and 18 months.  Other days, we had more.  I love them all and they are SO cute and fun (see upcoming photos) but I think that I may be reconsidering my desire to have a large family!  Not really, actually.  I know logically that it became overwhelming for me at times because I live alone with two quiet and generally calm cats.  Take anyone out of my daily situation and put them into a house with 25 or so adults (during the day, at night we only had 10) and anywhere from 6-10 children and then add a hyper dog, and then make it cold and rainy for a few days and I think that anyone would feel a little....overwhelmed. (This wasn't even the whole family.  We were missing a spouse, 5 cousins and 6 children/teenagers of cousins). We have long ago established that I don't like crowds.  And just because they're family doesn't mean they are any less....crowd-like on occasion.

Anyway, that was my week, stories to come with the photos.  I was going to go into the complications that arise when considering a bicycle purchase but that will have to wait for another day!