Sunday, July 29, 2012

Weekend Fun - Cards, Peaches, Plums & Husband

I love weekends like this past one.  It was full of all sorts of my favorite things & it got started bright & early on Friday.  Miss Mary & I made plans to leave at 7:30 a.m. on Friday to visit 2 scrapbooking stores as part of our Summer Passport event.  We paid $10 in early July & that gave us 20% off 8 different stores throughout New England.  We'd been to the first one on Thursday night when we took a Christmas in July class (4 GREAT cards) & now we were off to see 2 more stores.  Our destination was Absolutely Everything in Topsfield, but someone had suggested that we could stop at InkAboutIt during the same trip.  David (knowing traffic patterns) said that we should switch up our route so that we wouldn't be on 95 during rush hour (smart man!)  We had a delish breakfast & off we went.  We really were lucky as we arrived about 15 minutes before the store opened & marched in ready to shop.  The store has $1 Make n Takes & has them on Fridays during the summer.  We each made 9 cards & a bookmark.  Great deal!  After we left InkAboutIt we headed off to Absolutely Everything.  It really is a good thing that this store is 2 hours away.  I came home with all sorts of loot.  Put my 20% discount to good use & picked up some things on Clearance.
On Saturday morning I picked up DS at 7:15 (so that she could be back to work for 8:30) & we were off to the Farmers Market in Amherst.  This market is so well-organized & has such beautiful products.  I came home with 2 new plum varieties (Elephant Ear & Ozark) to turn into jam.  The Elephant Ear jam might rival Formosa for loveliest color, but I haven't tasted either & isn't that what jam is all about?  I'd been given rhubarb by a coworker so I knew that was still waiting to be used, too.  I also picked up a small box of tomato seconds & made 5 1/2 quarts of tomatoes for sauce before I was off to CT.
Right around lunchtime I left home to pick up my husband from the airport.  He'd been in Denver for a week & I missed him terribly.  His plane was a little late, but I was there with my sign (looking like a chauffeur).  My sign was made with the kids' magnetic letters & spelled out "My Fisherman".  There was only one passenger that fit that description.  I made 10 jars of Elephant Ear Plum jam & 11 jars of Ozark Plum jam after we returned from dinner. 
Today I went to the Hardwick Farmers Market & came home with nectarines & peaches.  I knew that I was going to make jam, but wanted to use up the rhubarb, too.  The internet came to my rescue (not an easy search but I'm persistent) with a recipe for Peach & Rhubarb jam. It had 1 flaw - it used powdered pectin & I only have liquid.  I followed the directions re: amounts of fruit & lemon juice & cooked & cooked.  I'd read in the description that the author added red food coloring because otherwise it was a yucky green color.  I couldn't imagine adding food coloring to my pristine jams, but thought I could add some of the Elephant Ear plums & it might be just enough to color it.  My next thought was that since I was using liquid pectin I was pretty sure that 2 c. of sugar wasn't going to be enough.  Hmmmm... what to do?  No easy answers for this question.  I went back to the Certo insert & looked at the quantities of peaches for peach jam & it was the same amount of fruit so I used the recommended amount of sugar & my fingers are crossed.  9 1/2 jars of Peach & Rhubarb jam are cooling on the center island.  I still have nectarines to use, but I've swapped Monday for Friday this week in terms of work so I might be able to get 1 batch of jam done in the afternoon.  Phew -- a lot of driving, a lot of shopping, husband home & jam, jam, jam ... What a wonderful life!

2 comments:

  1. You sure did a lot in just the two day weekend!! Sounds like you had a great weekend!! Wonder what goodies you picked up at the sb stores!! . . . .

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  2. Hi Fran,
    I wanted some of the new Graphic 45 papers & one store had a special that included the Nestabilities & stamps. What a great combination! I found all sorts of otehr treats, too. Watch for them in upcoming tea cards ;-)

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