Don’t Think That You Can’t

After we worked nearly six hours canning these peaches my wife said: “I’m not giving these to anyone… after all that work!” All that extra syrup will make for some good peach tea. My wife adds it whenever she makes herself a cup of tea.

Summer is over; mere hours gone by. Nothing says the end of Summer and the beginning of Autumn better than the final WORS race in Sheboygan. The sponsor’s name keeps changing but nothing beats the roots and inclines of Quarry View and Evergreen Parks on this renown mountain bike course. The colors are usual fantastic.

Ball is a standard bearer in home canning. They have an automatic home canning system. The advantages of the automatic system are that it has a locked top and is insulated. If someone touches it or if it falls over no human harm done. You can only can small batches but that may be preferred for the home gardener without lots of time. It is $300. We saw one up close at Boston Store in Mayfair Mall. The Container Store just had a grand opening at the mall.

The automated home canning system is the equivalent of canning with a pressure cooker, where the jars need not be covered in water. My mother shakes her head at our water bath canning. I don’t think she trusts it, as her mother always canned with a pressure cooker. My wife bought a rack that fits on the bottom of our pressure cooker so she can use it for canning; it wont fit quarts. You have to keep the jars off the bottom of whatever pot you are using when canning. You must follow proven recipes and they vary by process. Ball or the USDA Canning Guidelines are a good resource.

For half the price of Ball’s automated system you can get their electric water bath canner + multi cooker. You have a greater canning capacity with this appliance and it is more versatile. If I had seen this before we bought our traditional Granite 21.5 quart water bath canner I may have splurged for the electric bath canner. But for $14 and some change that water bath canner was a real deal at Farm and Fleet. (or was it Fleet Farm?) Their adds had the canner marked down. The Internet and price listed on the shelf had it marked down, but they didn’t have any out on the shelves. They got one from the warehouse for me. The price was unusually low.

Then we went to Menards and bought the canning tools for $6.

We made peach jam before we canned the peaches in syrup. I did most all the work on this one, and a whole lot of work on our previous endeavor. Ball makes an automated jam maker appliance. The Cranberry Festival is this weekend if you’re looking for cranberry jam.

Making jam was easier. Of course processing, cutting up, fewer peaches was the biggest difference. When the peaches are heated up in the canner you can see how all the peach pieces rise to the top. A lot of people on YouTube have a problem with the peaches floating; it bothers them. I don’t know why. Only ten half pints fit into the old style Granite water bath canner so we just put the extra in a pint jar. The large bottle we did not can. The peaches did not rise to the top. I do an extra test on the seal. I hit the tops with a back of the spoil. On one jar we got a thud rather than a ting so we put it in the refrigerator with the un-canned pint jar. Or you can freeze it.

I would say, outside of buying new jars, it cost us less than $1 for each of those half pint jars of jam; all other costs including energy included. The jars were something over fifty-cents each. My wife realized she has seen them at Good Will quite often.

Jammin….

You need no longer simmer the lids in very hot but not boiling water. We do anyway, not really really hot water but warm, because our first attempt at canning the peach relish was minimally successful. There are many YouTube videos about canning. A large percentage are put out by preppers. And when a prepper finds a change in canning lids… you can be sure many more videos are due to follow.

There are over forty peaches in that box. Those and the smaller ones in the basket I picked yesterday. There are still a dozen or so on the tree but I will not need the ladder to reach those. I picked them all; just some more examples of the work I don’t do, or rather money I am not making. It’s not work if no ones paying you to do it. A sad commentary on modern society?

We lost two branches. The fruit from the first, which never quite completely ripen we made into peach relish. We cooked up some brats with the relish and it was delicious. The apple cider vinegar was a bit strong. I should have used the white vinegar the original recipe called for and it would have been to die for. The peach flavor really comes out nicely when you cook the peach relish with the meat.

Much of the fruit from the second broken branch did ripen and we are turning that into jam. More to come. The better of those we canned just as peaches in sugar syrup.

We will be giving away and eating the best tree ripened fruit. With all the losses I think I can safely say we harvested two-hundred peaches that will end up being consumed by humans in one fashion or another.

Our tree is a “resilient peach” tree. It should grow fine if you’re not to far from the lake and it is shielded from the north wind.

Some are frightened by the supposed dangers in canning your own food. Well, if you fear the dangers of riding your own bike you can get $25,000 of riding insurance covering thousands of fun rides across the country with a $50 annual ride membership to U.S. Cycling.

I receive no financial benefit for mentioning or linking to any of the products I may mention in my posts. If you’d like to support this and my other blogs, or simply my family in general feel free to purchase one of these books. If you should choose to buy one or more of my books, then the years of effort I put in writing them will cease to be years of sloth and will be transformed into a whole lot of hard work.

The Saris Gala is this Friday in Madison. There will be a live auction and Gary Fischer, always the best dressed, will be there.

The $115 question: What were my three most favorite WORS races? Keeping the same question. Check out the Charity Jackpot Page link in the sidebar to possibly triple the amount.

Corrections

Before I get to my corrections here are a few worthy and/or worthwhile events you may be interested in. North Texas Giving Day begins today, the 17th. You can find a mountain bike related cause here. For the fitness and family minded The Fall Color Festival is just around the corner or you have Adventure Fest for those who feel travel makes it all the more worthwhile. A new race is on the WORS Schedule for September 27th; plan now. The Hixon Forest Epic is the race and that beautiful area of La Crosse is the place. I believe I participated in a WEMS race on those trails way back. I may be mistaken though if I am a correction will not follow. Switchbacks, I remember switchbacks. I enjoy switchbacks. I wish I was in shape.

The Morning Glories…

My first correction; our waffle iron. My wife, an ardent reader of my blog, reminded me that I did not give her our waffle iron, my older brother and his wife did. Which leads to a partial correction. My older brother and his family (I have one) don’t re-gift our Christmas gifts to them back to us, only my younger brothers (I have four) and sometimes my parents do.

And about making the perfect waffle. Watching a Divas Can Cook video via our Roku I discovered the secret. The Diva, though she didn’t explain why, whipped up the egg whites and folded them in. Now when you search “whipping egg whites for your waffles”, then you receive many search results. Waffle enthusiasts may enjoy this article. The gist of making light fluffy waffles; use warm ingredients with your baking powder/soda mix and/or whip up your egg whites and fold them in.

I am not sure if I ever mentioned this on any of my blogs, but I am sure I have told several people that I went to school with Mark Murphy of the Green Bay Packers. This is not correct. My final grade school class (I went to four grade schools) had a reunion recently and the Mark Murphy of our class, four out of five classmates agree, would look exactly like the Packer’s Mark Murphy …if he put on sixty more pounds. That would be sixty pounds of more muscle than the more contemporary form of bulk.

I have to conclude that seeing people you haven’t seen for decades is good for the brain. It really makes the old cells get their exercise as you try to recall people who look just so familiar. I was raised not to stare at others but had to until the old brain kicked in and I said, “Oh Yeah!” It’s like a foreign language you haven’t used in years; you’re completely lost when someone starts speaking it to you, but fifteen minutes in it all comes back.

My third correction or rather recommendation: those finish washers I used on my raspberry trellis don’t create the most stable result. It doesn’t matter since I notched the members into each other but counter sinking will create a more rigid connection. Of course I can just tighten up the screws as needed. Also the finish washers need to be glued where they guide the wire. A sleeve would work much better.

Roll out you’re wire, straighten it, before running it through your trellis. It’s easier if there are two of you. Don’t let kinks form.

I tied up everything up and tight with a light rope before I started the completion of my trellis. Note the solar post cap lights. I bought those at Menards on sale; 6 lumens. I didn’t purchase them on Amazon because I could not find any information on their brightness; lumens. I then found  a slew of yard solar lighting products at Blain’s Farm and Fleet in Waukesha when I went to purchase some canning equipment.

These clamps were useful when stringing the wire through the trellis. I ran some old conduit through first as a general guide through the bramble. I weaved fifty plus feet through the lower bars and repeated the process above.

I tried to pull everything as tight as possible (on a 90 degree day) and put in these thing-a-ma-jigs to deal with the expansion and contraction outdoor temperatures force. I decided after the fact that getting the wire as tight as possible may not be the best strategy. After a year of seasonal movements I will wire the runs together perpendicular, tying them together at fixed distances, creating a net, to keep the wire from sagging out to much. I will only do that on the upper, as I don’t want any exposed sharp wire ends at a level the dog explores at.

I lost another branch on the peach tree, though it was resting on the garage. The peaches were just about there and are ripening in a bag. One peach for every six inches of branch is the general guide line for keeping your peach tree from ripping itself apart. I’ll have to be more serious on that point though I find it hard to remove what should become perfectly good fruit; food. Still plenty of large juicy peaches hanging on our tree. When peaches smell like peaches, they are just about there. A perfect fruit?

You need to keep raspberries away from peach trees. Marigolds are a good companion for your tomatoes.

The $114 question: What were my three most favorite WORS races? Keeping the same question. Check out the Charity Jackpot Page link in the sidebar to possibly triple the amount.

Go Brewers

More than any other form of entertainment, we enjoy going to a baseball game the most. We had empty seats beside us and in front of us which made it all that more enjoyable. Otherwise we were surrounded by Pittsburg Pirates’ fans. They were very nice fans. Obviously more civilized than those obnoxious near toxic Chicago Cubs’ fans or perhaps they simply know how to hold their liquor.

Jonathan Lucroy ignited the first scoring rally. I wonder how many more seats stadiums would have without those giant screens. Few of the fans captured on camera actually understand where the camera is. There they are on the screen for all to see waving off into nothingness. The Pirates’ fans around us received calls from their friends that they saw them on television. Then their friends sent them pictures of them on television. I guess they have rewind features on their cable box.

The pitcher got his first hit in his professional career and set up the next scoring rally. The pitching management was perfect and could have been the difference in the game. The Brewers won.

The garden is producing. I didn’t think we were going to get any broccoli but suddenly it started coming along. You can eat the broccoli leaves (and turnip leaves). They actually sell broccoli leaves in the grocery store in Japan. My wife fried them up in a stir fry with bacon. She was afraid they were too bitter. I didn’t think so. I never ate greens before mostly because they always look so soggy. The peaches I left on the broken branches are ripening. We searched for recipes for unripe or green peaches and saw a few for pickling them. I searched “peach relish recipes” and the flood gates opened up. Yes there are uses for green peaches (a pepper, sweet onion salt and vinegar, and if they are really green you might want to add sugar). Add “unripe” to your search if you have green peaches. We are going to do some canning for the first time.

No time to fit Treadfest into your holiday weekend? Not interested in gravel runs and the glorious beauty of the La Crosse area? Well, there is another gravel ride as part of the Bicycle Times Adventure Fest in October, if you are one incapable of acting on the spur of the moment. Of course you’ll have to drive (or ride) to Pennsylvania; home of the Pittsburg Pirates.

The $113 question: What were my three most favorite WORS races? Keeping the same question. Check out the Charity Jackpot Page link in the sidebar to possibly triple the amount.

The Gravel of the Earth

Sometimes I feel like the gravel of the earth. Useful when needed but otherwise disregarded.

If you can’t wait for Tosa Fest, and the WORS Treadfest in Lake Geneva is too high brow for your tastes, and you just have nothing going on for Labor Day, The La Crosse Area Bicycle Festival may be the answer to your prayers. The La Crosse Gravel Classic, part of the festival, is September 6th. The course is mostly in Minnesota; nothing highbrow about that. La Crosse is a beautiful part of the country and no more than a three hour drive away.

I was worried about the branch pictured above being pulled from the peach tree by the weight of its fruit. I should have been paying more attention to the other side of the tree. The dog began barking strangely. So I immediately went to see what was wrong. My heart broke at the sight. I set the broken off branch up as high as I could upon the fencing and left the ripening peaches hang. I picked only the few that were nearly ripe. I should have trimmed away more, even if losing a large number of peaches. I’ll have to do better balancing the tree as it fills back in.

September begins tomorrow already. Wow. The Fall Color Festival is only four weeks away and don’t forget about the Saris Gala the day before. The Art Museum had an Art Ride this last weekend; their first. Their route took them past displays of local public art. I am not sure if the promised beer was of the craft variety.

I WAS a great fan of the Milwaukee Art Museum’s original design for their new addition, now under construction. Then a committee altered the design and now we have some… thing that represents everything that is wrong with architecture. It’s being built right under the Eero Saarinen War Memorial addition, running right out to the lake, and beside the Calatrava addition. At least it can only be seen from the East.

My wife is going to be shocked. Then heart broken when she comes home and sees the tree.

The $112 question: What were my three most favorite WORS races? Keeping the same question. Check out the Charity Jackpot Page link in the sidebar to possibly triple the amount.

Cool and Overcast; My Favorite

I am not a fan of preseason football, but my knee has been bothering me for no apparent reason. Just started yesterday. There is only one reason I will watch Thursday Night Football and that is; if the Packers are playing. Otherwise I will go out of my way not to watch. Football is for Sundays (and Monday Night). And yes my knee has truly begun to hurt.

No, this is not a grave marker for a career, but a trellis for our raspberries. (knock on wood) It is coming along. I routered out, notched and interlocked the cross connections, not just for stability. It was also so I could shim the cross members so that they would align vertically and keep the shims out of sight.

I was looking for something to sleeve the holes the wire/cable will run through, so the wire/cable would not cut into the wood. I couldn’t find anything that matched my needs though the man suggested some hardware for wire rail systems. He sent me to the wrong aisle and I couldn’t find what I wanted. I didn’t want anything with threads, like a t-nut, or they would cut into the wire/cable I am planning to weave between the two structures. So I bought finish washers and hammered them over the holes, both sides.

And why counter sink the screws when you have 100 finish washers. Note how all the screw heads align.

I only had to shim one horizontal member, so that both ran on the same line. The ends are all plum with each other. Now, if the stone border of the raspberry patch doesn’t align with your horizontals? Realign the stone border. You would be surprised at the number of people to which that solution would remain eternally a mystery. I could write a book; “The Way of the Shim”, and impart valuable life lessons to my readers. Mechanics and assembly were important skills men were expected to learn, like self-defense, in the past. I fear no more.

Now all you men can run to your wives. “Sweetie! I need to buy a router.” One more goal in my life accomplished; to give men more power. It is what keeps woman happy.

The $111 question: What were my three most favorite WORS races? Keeping the same question. Check out the Charity Jackpot Page link in the sidebar to possibly triple the amount.

Oh Waffles!

Morning glories are wondrous. They are beautiful, grow like a weed once established, but are easy to be rid of if they are someplace you don’t want them to be. Glorious.

Why don’t my waffles taste like those at the restaurant? I keep asking the Internet and have yet received no answers. I bought my wife a waffle maker one Christmas to boot, and still stand denied that crisp clean restaurant result.

Today is National Waffle Day. Support US made waffles.

Did you miss it?

No, not waffles for breakfast, you can eat those anytime today. I’m talking about the underwear ride last week.

The sun had long set. I was sitting before the TV watching one of my favorite shows via Roku, “Rough Cut”, and taking notes when suddenly there came a roar. As if some people had broken out in brawl.

‘A ha!’ I thought ‘That group that hangs out in front of the house across the street at odd hours has finally broken out into a fight.’ I rushed to the front door, cell phone in hand ready to call the police, and threw the door open.

My jaw dropped. Hundreds of bicyclists rode buy our home and those of our neighbors in nothing but there underwear.

When I realized the horror of what was playing out before me I yelled through the screen door, “It’s a one way street!” And they were going the wrong way!

My wife came running down and joined me at the door. After her initial shock she laughed and waved at what looked to be thousands of riders. “Are they going around the block?” She asked, wondering how there could be so many.

My thoughts were somewhat different. ‘Don’t smile’ I internally scolded, ‘Give them the evil eye and the fearsome frown, they are going the wrong way on a one way street.’

“It’s so cold outside.” my wife fretted over their plight.

‘It is cold.’ I entertained. A smile stretched across my face at the thought of the temperature tormented.

Neither the fruit of the loom nor the fruit of the womb, our peaches yet hang low in bounty. They have yet to ripen and autumn is quickly approaching. They would make a sweet topping for your waffles.

..What? You lost your appetite??? Would my explaining  the fact that most all the riders were young and fit, make a difference? They also had appropriate lighting, flashing red and a few head lights. Some were wrapped in strings of LED lights and one bike was made to look like a chariot. …Didn’t help?

Don’t forget the Fall Color Fest in the Southern Kettles or the quickly approaching Tosa Fest. Right now, at this very moment, Emery’s is having a big Summer sale.

For the total complete bicycle enthusiast The Saris Gala is just around the corner; special guest Gary Fischer the father of mountain bike and always the best dressed for any occasion.

I volunteered to man a booth at the WORS Collectivo Classic in Minooka. Not the Minooka in Illinois, and certainly not the Minooka in Alabama, but the Minooka in Waukesha. I arrived and realized that I had forgotten my camera. So I didn’t get out on the course to take any pictures, but the company was good. I bought a waffle from one of the food vendors, no joke, for a light lunch.

This past weekend WORS had a great cross country romp up Green Bay way. Their next event is September 6th on a fabulous course in Lake Geneva Treadfest. The high end resort experience is fitting for the devoted rider as the season’s end quickly approaches. One of my favorite races, but I have failed in my weight loss goal and will not be competing.

I am reminded that Metro Mountain Bikers is an organization advocating the building of sustainable trails. They also spend much time maintaining those trails; along with other IMBA chapters across our State and Country. Maintenance is something The Rock has given up on. Where $5 might not seem much for self paid access to their trails, it is when the trails are neglected and overgrown. Alpine Valley has trails not only maintained but with a cheaper access fee.

Here are some of IMBA’s best trail centers across the nation.

Copper Harbor, in the UP, is a system of trails growing in length and reputation.

Always wear a helmet and dress appropriately when riding the trails.

The $110 question: What were my three most favorite WORS races? Keeping the same question. Check out the Charity Jackpot Page link in the sidebar to possibly triple the amount.

The Fair, The Fair, The Fair

It’s that time of year. A good time of year. We got to the Wisconsin State Fair and did something we haven’t done there in a long while; spend a good deal of money. Some treats for the dog, a gimmick sprinkler head and a hat for my head.

Wait,…

Sorry, I thought I saw my helmet crawling across the floor but then I remembered that I threw it out. It was sooooo yucky. Yes I bought a hat not a helmet but a really need a helmet more than a hat.

The bicycling community suffered a significant loss last Saturday. An active member of the Bike Fed was thrown from his bicycle  by a speed bump and suffered a fatal head injury. Same age as myself and the accident wasn’t too far from my home. I need to buy a new helmet. I also have almost been thrown from my bicycle by speed bumps.

Helmets are required for all WORS races and this coming weekend is the Collectivo Classic at Minooka. Four dollars for parking. if you’re a participant you can get a parking pass at the registration tent. Get it on your car before you’re ticketed. The race is near Milwaukee. If you’re interested in the sport of mountain biking come on out.

You don’t need a helmet to bowl, though after watching choice bowling footage on YouTube you may change your mind. National Bowling Day was last Saturday. I did not go bowling Saturday yet somehow the day was declared a success.

Look at those cattle. Yum. We saw some ornery horses, fat pigs, gentle lambs and some hopping rabbits too.

I heard Meijer’s bought the prize lamb at the Fair, or so I heard. Meijer’s just opened two stores in the area, their first. We went to the nearer and my wife found the produce well priced. I observed they sold single serving size cuts of meat; lamb and bacon wrapped beef medallions. A sign of a predominant single lifestyle? I wasn’t overly impressed though it is a nice store. They had plenty of hummus, a good source of protein for weight loss, in their produce section. We bought the roasted pepper hummus. There will always be a market for food no matter the economy. Much of the State Fair is geared towards eating. I just today realized that we were there on the day of the Governors auction. We were walking out the gate as it started.

That’s one proud rooster. Then the camera’s battery died.

After buying half dozen of the all valuable cream puffs, and needing to get them to my mother’s house as quickly as possible, we happened walked by the canine sports arena. Oh dread. If only we had known such a venue existed, but we could not stop. I also didn’t see it listed in any State Fair promotions. If you ever watched the Purina Dog Shows, the active competitions, that is what it’s all about. We saw a couple of water jumps. Good for a splash if you stand at the far end of the tank.

I am baking another cake. Going Martha Stuart; upping the butter and sugar and using half all-purpose flour rather than all cake flour. I went with the smaller pans. Almost doubled the bake time. I need to get a third 8”. My wife refuses to let me frost it. The last cake, from a recipe I devised myself from a menagerie of recipes, I used only cake flour. It was not dry but it was not buttery. So I surrender to the all knowledgeable Martha. You can see the sprinkler head we bought at the Fair in the background. I am sure that pepper from our garden would have been award winning. Ike, our dog, pulls the peppers from the plants when they are ripe.

Decatur Dairy had some award winning cheeses at the Fair; their Havarti and pepper Havarti were ribbon winners. They are at the Tosa Farmer’s Market.

Tosa fest is coming September 11-12.. It is always good to plan ahead. The Fall Color festival is fast approaching; September 26th.

Ta-dah! My wife frosted the cake. I told her to trim away those muffing tops but who ever listens to me.

The $109 question: What were my three most favorite WORS races? Keeping the same question. Check out the Charity Jackpot Page link in the sidebar to possibly triple the amount.