Week in Review - May 12 - 18

It's been a week of ups and downs!

Most of the week I have spent recuperating from whatever was stopping up my head slipped and went to my chest and I felt like roadkill for a few days. 

But it didn't affect our evening with Eddie Izzard. 

It was a long, but exciting day/evening and I would do it again in a heartbeat. In fact, today, I am wearing my "Wunderbar" t-shirt from the concert.

While 'lazing' around the house, I finished up 3 books and well on my way to finishing number 4. I found out one of my favorite authors, Estelle Ryan, has her books on Hoopla courtesy of my library. I really love her books, but can't afford to buy them. But it seems they have them all. Except for one in the middle (which I will have to talk to them about).

If you read my post from yesterday, you know the garden is really growing. And with the heat which has been increasing this week, I'm sure it will really shoot up like crazy in the coming week.

But on Saturday I tackled the massive amount of strawberries I had in the fridge.

I also picked up some blueberries and lavender to make a Blueberry/Lavender Jam someone had told me about.

I used this recipe with a bit of a change. My lavender wasn't dry enough to pulverize to a fine powder in my 'thingy'. (You know, that kitchen thing you can't remember the name of!) So I used a 'step' I found on another recipe and soaked the buds in hot water for 1 hour and then strained it, adding the water to the jam pot.

I also made another batch of Strawberry/Blueberry jam. For that, I used the regular Sure-Jell recipe, just making sure I had a total of 5 cups of crushed fruit to start with.

These are half-pint jars, so I have 2 pints of Blueberry/Lavender and 4 pints of Strawberry/Blueberry and 4.5 pints of plain strawberry. There are almost full half-pint jars in the fridge with the leftovers of each batch.

So no more strawberry 'jammin' for me. Next on the list, peach!

And I made a batch of strawberry ice cream base to be frozen today. I like a cooked ice cream base, almost a custard, for my ice cream. So I make it the day before and cool in it the fridge overnight.

Otherwise this week:

• Wrote 5 posts
• Finished 3 books
• Slept a lot
• Watered the garden

This coming week...

• Back to work (huzzah)!
• Kindergarten Promotion on Thursday! And she is reading something she wrote during the presentation. Pizza afterwards.
• More and more garden watering as the temperatures are to be in high 80's, low 90's this week

But for now, a bit more coffee and then off to the store to pick up some ice to start freezing the ice cream. I have to deliver some to Savvy at work on my way to pick up Lady K from her dad this afternoon. And I need to throw a pork loin in the crockpot for Sunday dinner. Pork, rice, gravy, sliced tomatoes, and field peas (frozen, unfortunately, but fresh ones soon).