Hubby went to work and I commenced laundry. After all, it is Wednesday!!
Before Hubby went to work he helped me carry all the jams and jellies to the basement. My food shelves look so bare. Other than meat storage I have very little left on the shelves. I have about 50-75 quarts of green beans in my cabinet, but very little else. This is actually a good thing but sure makes me nervous. This is probably the lowest I've ever been. It's not bad because the stuff needs to be eaten before it gets too very old; but when you get this low - your garden had better produce or it won't be pretty this Winter!!
When we went to the reunion this week-end I took a bunch of marshmallows for the kids to build animals, buildings or whatever but I bought way too many. Today, I finally got those frozen and will no longer have to worry about marshmellows for at least a year or more!! I probably had 6-8 bags of big white marshmellows and 4 bags of miniature colored marshmellows. Yep, that ought to hold me!
I also took all the dehydrated tomatoes, blended them up and put them in a quart jar. Now I don't have to worry about buying anymore tomato paste. I made my own tomato paste last year and canned it up but still . . . I had so much left from each jar I opened and I hate waste! Doing it this way I'll make just what I need. It will also be great to take some of the dried, blended tomatoes and sprinkle them in scrambled eggs, rice, breads and pastas. I'm really looking forward to making more this Summer. I'm going to go ahead and make tomato and spaghetti sauce but in a pinch I could use these dried tomatoes for that too.
The nasturtiums are blooming. I got a pound of unsalted butter out of the refrigerator, brought it to room temperature, chopped up some nasturtium blooms and added 1 tsp. special blend of what I call "Cheese Herbs", threw in a few dashes of garlic salt and made the cutest little butter pats. I'll freeze them up and pull them out later for special occasions like this coming Thanksgiving! You can make these with an assortment of herbs and flowers. You can use violet blossoms, rose blossoms, borage blossoms (I love pink rose petals) and make your butter match your main dish. For instance, Poultry Seasoning with chicken, Italian with spaghetti, or Herbes de Provence with a beef roast. The combinations are endless, once you have developed your own line of special seasonings and know which flowers are edible. You can pipe the butter onto a tray covered with parchment paper and then put them in the freezer or smooth it out onto parchment paper as I did and cut shapes with miniature cookie cutters. Then put them back in the freezer in a nice container and pull them out when you need something special. It's such an elegant touch.