Sunday, August 29, 2010

Weekend stuff

I finally got my energy back yesterday, and promptly overdid things, but it felt so good to be tired out from overdoing rather than just from breathing. :o)

We have neighbors with a wonderful tart-green-apple tree in their yard. They let me pick about 30 pounds of apples last week, and yesterday Kieffer and Lil Miss A helped me turn the apples into 15 quarts of apple pie filling. I gave 2 quarts back to the couple who let me have the apples. I'm now in the process of making jelly out of the cores and peels. I added mint from our mint patch to turn it into mint jelly, but it's not very minty. So maybe minty apple jelly is more what it should be called. It's a beautiful rosy pink color and I do not know where that came from. Green apples + green mint = rosy pink jelly? How can this be?

We also saw Britta moved into her on campus apartment for another year. It has two bedrooms, living room, bathroom and teeny little kitchen which I thought was just adorable. She still has to pay for a meal plan, so the baby kitchen will be for making breakfasts and snacks.

I get pretty emotional when she leaves, even though we are pretty much tired of one another after a summer together, and I'm a little melancholy now. She's only half an hour away and she's where she wants to be.

Kieffer drove the Jeep most of the way home. This is a big deal because he's determined to learn to handle a stick shift and the Jeep is a stick. He did really well, and the sweet old Jeep let him get away with a few jerky starts. She's a good ol' girl.

2 comments:

Mrs. Mac said...

Aaah ... glad you are feeling better. Good score on the fine apples ... would love to find some pippins :) I'll have to wait another few years to get even thirty pounds from my two apple trees. Did you add lemon juice to the apply mint jelly? When I added it to my wild rose jelly ... wow .. it really turned hot pink. We're still waiting for Nathan's school to start up (wait, wait, wait patiently) .. Britta's set up sounds sweet.

Carol Reese said...

Many many years ago, I made some mint apple jelly. The first batch was a pale rosy pink. I put green food coloring in the second batch. I thought it was because I used peppermint tea as I had no access to fresh mint at the time. Peppermint tea is kind of reddish, so maybe it's just from the mint leaves.