I love to cook but hate reading recipes

I was so excited to can caramelized onions and gingered carrots (made separately, canned at the same time) tomorrow that I neglected to read all the way to the bottom of the recipe instructions before going to the farmers market this evening. Boo.

The good news is that I read the recipe BEFORE Ben started slicing onions because we learned that we’d need a pressure canner! Oops. We don’t have one of those, or even the space to store one if we did. Well, if we did I might de-throne the meat slow cooker, which we really only use for Thanksgiving, and hide it somewhere outside of the kitchen. I’m 99% certain that I’d use a pressure canner at least 3x more than our jumbo slow cooker (good for when we need it, awful space-sucker when we don’t).

Also, today was the last Wednesday night Farmers Market for the year. Sad. I stocked up on lots of stuff for the winter: organic parsley (to mince and freeze), organic butternut squash for Friday night, local organic Gala apples, a big bag of local popping corn, and fresh whole wheat tortillas (also to freeze).

Anyone out there in the blog-o-sphere have any ideas on preserving 2-5 lbs of carrots WITHOUT a pressure canner?

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Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving: there are SO many things to be thankful for this year, including anyone who’s reading this blog! Wow. I’m not sure we quite understood how much love there was out there before the wedding. Honestly, we tried to avoid having expectations to avoid being disappointed by anything, and any that we did have were exceeded to the point of being blown out of the water. Thank you. Oh, and if you haven’t received your thank you note yet, we’re working on them. They will be done by the end of the calendar year. As will donations to Mazon, Hillel, and Bonai.

We had a big Thanksgiving/Ben’s birthday extravaganza with a turkey (all weekend) and everything. Sorry, there are no pictures. We weren’t dressed for photos anyway, most of the long weekend was in PJs, except for when we had friends over for Thanksgiving dinner, a little black friday shopping (PJs and a new backup hard drive), and shabbat services at Bonai.

Hopefully, I’ll soon be thankful for a new job. Or at least going back to the bookstore for buybacks and spring semester books. I HATE APPLYING FOR JOBS and I’m getting bored of spending 3/5 days by myself on the couch. Thankfully (there’s the word of the day again) my brothers got us a Wii and as soon as I scrape together the funds I’ll get a Wii Fit Plus so that I can practice skiing without spending gas money to get up to the mts.

Anyway, happy belated Turkey Day!

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