Happy Thanksgiving 2010

Another great Thanksgiving on the books. It was just the 4 of us plus my mom, so the table was not so full as she would have liked, but several extra people were invited, but already had plans.

Menu:

Turkey

Stuffing

Cranberry sauce

Gravy

Sweet potato casserole

Green Bean casserole

Rolls

Olives

Pumpkin Pie

Cran-Apple pie

Apple-Cherry pie

All very tasty and wonderful - and leftovers of all exist! Yum. I think I like eating the leftovers as much as eating it the first time. And pie for breakfast tomorrow. double yum!

Popcorn Delivery Time

A and I went out and picked up our order of popcorn from the Popcorn Kernel this afternoon. Once we got home, he got into uniform and off we went to deliver it. He got 13 orders delivered today (20% of total). I'm hoping that between church and another round of delivering in the neighborhood tomorrow that he can get over 50% delivered. We may have to take a thermos of cocoa with us tomorrow, though. It was quite chilly today. Not so bad if you are just walking to the car, but pretty chilly for dragging a wagon around for over an hour.

Daylight savings also makes the deliveries more difficult, as I don't really want to be wandering around in the dark trying to deliver popcorn and too many people aren't home until dark once the time changes tonight.

Brrrr

It got cold today. Not just a little cool, but cold, windy, and wet. We even had some sleet, even though the weathermen were saying it was only well north of us. It was chilly in the house this morning, but we were all moving around and didn't feel it so much. Then I had errands to run, then bustling around putting stuff away and making lunch. I didn't really feel it until I went to sit down here at the computer (and instantly got a cat in my lap) and found my mouse hand getting very COLD.

So, once the cat left me, ON went the heat. First time of the season.

I covered up more of the garden than I had initially planned, because several of the peppers and tomatoes still have so much produce on them. I picked another 13 hot peppers today, plus some green tomatoes (the ones that had at least a tiny bit of red/pink on them).

Jack Frost vs the Garden

We've got a freeze warning for Fri, Sat, and Sun nights currently. I'm not sure it will actually get down to 32 or below any of these nights, but I suppose I must be prepared, for the sake of the garden.

I know the garlic (coming up nicely) and parsley will be just fine. I think we're going to cover the cherry tomato plant, as it still has a couple dozen unripe tomatoes on it. I'll pick any that are even remotely turning red, but then cover and hope for the best. I need to look at the other tomato plants more closely, but I'm leaning towards just picking all the tomatoes and pulling up the plants. Probably the same for the bell pepper and hot pepper plants, though all are still producing well - especially the banana peppers and jalepenos. I picked a good dozen today, off 2 plants. I may just try to cover them, after picking all the good size peppers.

The only other things still in the garden are the basil (almost dead), cilantro (self-sprouting like crazy), and the late potatoes. I know that spring planted potatoes are put in well before the last frost, so can they take a frost?? I've never planted potatoes before, so this is a total experiment...

What's for Dinner

It's been a cold, dreary day today. M says that we have skipped fall, but we haven't. If it were sunny, we would be enjoying the low-to-mid 50's of today, but combined with rain, it is just plain yucky.

The house was chilly, so what better than to crank up the oven and cook. Actually soup might be better, but we just finished taco soup and M dislikes soup in any form. So, dinner was:

roast chicken

roasted potatoes

green beans

garlic bread (yeah, so we probably didn't need another starch, but it looked good at the store)

apple pie

The house smells delicious now. I can't wait for my pie!

Growing and growing

I decided to measure the kids today, and yep, they are both still growing like weeds. M currently measures 69 1/2 inches (5' 9.5") and A is 59 1/4 inches (4' 11.25").

What I find really interesting is that A is the same height that M was on 3/30/08, or 2 years 7 months ago - whereas A is 2 yrs 10 months younger. So A is just slightly ahead of M's pace. This could be A is going to be taller, or A is peaking slightly sooner or just chance. Who knows. I suppose we won't really know until they are both done growing.

But due to all this growing going on, I'm not buying A a hiking backpack anytime soon. I've been told that they will cover about a 9 inch height range, but given that M is a good 10 inches taller than A now, and both are still growing, I think any pack I get now, A would outgrow in the next 3 years. He's borrowed one from the Scoutmaster for the campout this month. It will be a very gently intro to backpacking.

Garden update

I dug the sweet potatoes today. The nights have been getting cooler lately and it is supposed to rain tomorrow, so it was time. Unfortunately the sweet potatoes didn't seem to do as well this year as last year. Last year we had some gigantic sweets. This year, the biggest ones were about 4.5 oz. (vs almost 2 lbs last year). Our entire harvest this year was only about 4.5 pounds.

We thought about harvesting the sweet potatoes a few weeks ago, but I'm sure they would have been even smaller then. And I just checked - this years harvest is one week later than last year, but last year we had already turned on the heat by then. This year we haven't yet, we've only had one night barely dip into the upper 30's.

I'm not sure why they did so much worse this year. Perhaps because I planted them in-between rows of green beans and they got robbed of sun or water or soil nutrients? I had planted the beans well before the sweet potatoes would be ready to go in, but then my first planting didn't germinate, so I was 2 weeks later. And then the beans just kept on producing, so I didn't pull them out as soon as I had anticipated. I'd been trying for a bit of the square foot gardening/interplanting techniques and making better use of my space, but if that caused my poor yields, I'm not sure its worth it. Alternately it could be that we went on vacation for 2 weeks and the garden didn't get watered as regularly. or just the vagaries of weather. I wish I knew....

The hot peppers and the cherry tomatoes are still plowing on full steam ahead. I picked 8-10 cherry tomatoes today and there must still be dozens on the plant. Last week, one branch of the cherry tomato plant broke off (with a half dozen green to slightly red tomatoes on it), so I brought it home and put it in a vase of water. The reddish ones have fully ripened now, and most of the others are turning red - just one resolutely green tomato.

I'll have to try to add pictures tomorrow...