We’ve been getting some heavy rain, here in the Sacramento valley. It rained the night before Halloween, and even though it was nearly sunny all day on Halloween, by night time it had started sprinkling again, and just about the time the teenagers would have been out trick-or-treating, it was pouring.

Ever since it’s been gray and damp. When we drove up to Apple Hill yesterday we drove through patches where it was barely drizzly, and then would round a corner and be smack in the middle of a downpour. Today the sky stayed cloudy all day, and by the time I left the office for home it had started to drizzle again. And tonight’s downpour waited until just about the time the other two second altos were arriving at my house for our sectional rehearsal, so that they came in the door laughing and soaked.

The downsides to the rain are that it’s doing a number on the Halloween decorations around the neighborhood, and because it’s been so heavy the drains are a bit overloaded, which means that for those of us who park on the street, getting from the street to the sidewalk can sometimes require either wading through a small lake, or hiking to the end of the block to a safer spot to cross. But on the plus side, all this rain is sorely needed in our area. And even better, my poor little car, which parks on the street all year round and consequently is permanently covered in a thick layer of bugs and dust, is finally getting clean!

It’s NaBloPoMo time again!

You have to time the visit just right. If you try to go up too close to Halloween, not only do you have to put up with heavy crowds, it’s also more likely to still be a bit too warm. If you go too late in the season, then either you’re fighting the Christmas crowds, or half the best stops have closed down. So the best time, we have determined, to go to Apple Hill, is the weekend after Halloween.

It was raining this morning – just a drizzle in Sacramento, but we drove through spots along the freeway where it was coming down harder. The worst rain was just before we hit Placerville, which I suspect is the reason for why so few people were out and about at the apple farms, but we didn’t care. We had an umbrella in the car, and jackets, and what’s getting a little wet when compared to obtaining fresh-picked apples and the best caramel apples and pie around.

We bought caramel apples, of course, and ate them for lunch later once we got back home. We bought a quartet of round little individual pies, which are currently residing in the freezer, to be pulled out and savored over the next few months. We shared a plate of apple crisp ala mode, dripping with warm cider sauce, and sipped hot mulled cider from tiny paper cups. And naturally, we also had to bring lots of apples back home with us.

There’s half a dozen or so Fuji apples, because those are some of Richard’s favorite, and an entire box of Red Delicious. There were also half a dozen huge, tart Granny Smith apples in the mix, but I dragged out my handy dandy peeler / corer / slicer contraption and turned them into two French apple pies. As for the rest, they will either be eaten, dried, or turned into apple date butter at some point in the next few weeks.

Aside from the trip up to Apple Hill, it’s been a rather quiet day. Richard went off to a Nanowrimo write-in, while I stayed home and cast on for the stocking I’m knitting for my niece. I continue to be surprised as just how quickly I can actually do stranded colorwork, since normally I am a fairly speedy knitter, but for some reason I always expect the colorwork to go more slowly. By the time I finally put everything down in order to go put together the pies while Richard worked on dinner, I was just about ready to turn the heel.

It’s NaBloPoMo time again!

When we moved into this house last year we knew even before we bought it that the kitchen would have to be redone. That was tackled this summer, and the newly expanded and renovated kitchen was worth the three and a half months of living with a thick coating of construction dust, washing dishes in a tiny little bathroom pedestal sink, and have six cats extremely annoyed at being locked downstairs for the duration.

That wasn’t the only project we knew we needed to tackle for this house, even though it was certainly the largest. One of the smaller projects on the (long) list of things that needed to be dealt with was the upstairs back bedroom. When we moved in, it was painted turquoise, and had oatmeal colored carpet on the floor. I peeled up one corner shortly after we moved in, and it looked like there might be wood under there, but we weren’t sure what kind of condition it might be in, and with the state of the kitchen, dealing with that carpet was pretty low priority.

After the kitchen was done, we assessed the state of the finances, and looked at our list, and decided that the upstairs bedroom was a prime target for finishing, if only because at least with that done, the entire upstairs would be pretty much complete.

Apparently we never took pictures of the room the way it used to be, but here is what it looks like now.

Well, this isn’t the entire room, obviously, since I was mainly trying to capture the color (it is called ‘Happy Camper’. I have no idea why), the floor, and the new wainscoting on the walls. Every other room in the upper level has picture rail, or wainscotting, or some similar feature, except for this bedroom (although it did, at least, have the molding over the doors, same as all the other rooms). We used the same walnut stained bamboo we used for the kitchen, so it flows nicely.

We’re not exactly sure what we’re going to do with this room, now that it’s complete. However, its good that they managed to finish the final flooring and painting on Friday afternoon, because we needed the extra space on Friday night, as a place to set up the breakfast nook table to provide extra seating space for the Nanowrimo writers to sit. Richard’s the municipal liason for the group again this year, and along with hosting the kick-off party last weekend, we also hosted the midnight write-in. There were 27 or so writers crammed into every available seat in the house, all armed with laptops and goodies to nibble, and stacks of notes for their novels, and at midnight they all settled down and commenced to typing away. So having the extra two seats at the kitchen island (now that we have both a kitchen island, and seats tall enough to sit there) and the table in the now-finished green room, was definitely a good thing.

It’s NaBloPoMo time again!

I am having oodles of fun with the new kitchen. Mainly lots of baking, but some other stuff too. Richard had a writers’ group on Friday and I made lentil soup for dinner, and then decided to make a batch of pumpkin chocolate chip brownies for the group, which apparently made such a hit they were still talking about them at the writers’ group brunch the next day (Seriously, these are some amazing brownies and it is pretty much impossible to just eat one. In fact, it is often extremely difficult to not just sit right down with a fork and eat the entire pan, which is why I usually only make them when there are other people on whom to foist them. I’ve talked about these brownies in the past, but just in case you don’t feel like poking around in my archives, I’ll be nice and relink to the recipe: http://www.findyourcraving.com/craving/pumpkin-brownies).

Today we hit the local farmer’s market (there’s a huge one that meets in a big parking lot downtown, under the freeway, on Sundays). The main reason for going to the farmer’s market was to get the ingredients for corn relish, which I have been wanting to make since I checked out Laurie Colwin’s “More Home Cooking” from the library earlier this year. You stir a bunch of fresh corn, slice right off the cob, into a big pan with some diced red and green bell peppers, dry mustard, cidar vinegar, a little dash of cayenne pepper, and some brown sugar and salt. Everything is simmered together and then at the very last minute you stir in a whole mess of chopped onions, and then pour it into sterilized pint jars, which are then given a boiling water bath before the process is finally complete. I’ve never had corn relish, at least not as far as I can remember, but the recipe sounded rather intriguing, and we’re at the tail end of the season for all the ingredients, so I figured what the heck.

This stuff is really, really good. It’s a little strong by itself but that just means it’s perfect for things that don’t have much flavor on their own (like chicken or fish, for example). The recipe made a little over six pints, so I made turkey burgers for dinner and topped them with some of what was leftover. And now there’s six more jars of home-canned goodness to add my growing collection in the pantry.

Since I was in the kitchen anyway, for the corn relish, I decided to whip up another batch of pizza dough to restock the freezer. The recipe we use makes enough for 2 regular pizzas, or 12 little individual pizzas, so I let it go through its first rise, and then sectioned the dough into 12 balls, wrapped them individually in waxed paper, and stashed them all in a bag in the freezer. If we take the dough out in the morning and leave it in the fridge, it’s ready by the time we get home, and then it’s just a matter of smashing it into some sort of round, flat shape, tossing on some toppings, and sliding it into the oven for a few minutes. During the week, we are all about the quick, easy dinner options.

I made another batch of pumpkin brownies this evening, mainly because there was half the can of pumpkin left to use up and also because we wanted something sweet after the kick of that corn relish. And then I stirred up a bowl of bread dough (another recipe from Laurie Colwin’s “More Home Cooking”) which will rise overnight, get punched down tomorrow morning, and then baked when I get home from work.

It sounds like I have spent all day in the kitchen, but that isn’t the case at all. Most of this weekend I have been camped out in the living room, surrounded by cats, working on my current big knitting project. I bought a sweater kit last February at Stitches West, and my friend and I (she bought the same kit, but in a different colorway) agreed we would finish the sweaters in time to wear them to next year’s Stitches West. Knitting a stranded colorwork sweater is not something one should put off til the last minute, so I finally cast on for it two weeks ago and have been industriously knitting away at it ever since. So far I’m making really good progress – both sleeves are done and this weekend I plowed through the first few inches of the body.

There has also been a (very little) bit of progress on the home improvement front. The very last project we’d like to accomplish this year is the upstairs guest room. It’s currently painted an interesting shade of turqouise, and while the berber carpet seems like it’s good quality, the cats use it as their personal scratching zone. The style of the room just doesn’t match the feel of the rest of the upstairs. Plus, since part of the kitchen remodel included physically moving the door several feet further down the wall, it’s been looking pretty ugly and unfinished these days. So the plan is to rip out the carpet, and then either refinish the floor underneath (depending on the condition of the original wood), or replace the carpet with the same dark bamboo we used for the kitchen.  I’ve been trying to decide between a chair rail, or wainscotting for the walls, and I think we’ve decided on wainscotting, but more importantly, we have also finally picked a color for the walls themselves, since the one thing we have been sure about since we moved into this house was that some day, that turqouise had to go.

To that end, yesterday Richard and I cleared away a whole pile of stuff that’s been accumulating in that room so I could get started on the whole de-turqouisification project. While he was off at his writers’ group brunch I primed a big chunk of one of the walls, and then I painted a huge splotch of our chosen color (a green named ‘Happy Camper’) in the middle. We’ve been wandering into the room ever since, looking at the big green splotch at various times of day and in various levels of light. It’s a bit more olive than I was thinking it would be from the color chip, but I think we’re both okay with that. Plus the wainscotting on the bottom half of the wall will be all white, so it’s not like it’s going to be hideously overpowering, so…Happy Camper green it is. Now all we have to do is figure out where to put everything that’s currently *in* that room, so that I can get the rest of the walls primed and painted, and so that the workcrew can have clear access to commence with the carpet-removal floor refinishing / replacing.

Three cheers for the Connecticut Supreme Court! Three states down, only 47 to go!

Now just hoping that California’s Prop 8 (the one that wants to take away the right to marry from same sex couples) gets the crushing defeat it deserves.

Wow. Funny how fast an entire month can slip by. Every once in a while I thought about writing, but then I would get distracted, or just didn’t feel like it, and whoosh. Suddenly it’s October. Sorry about that.

I had jury duty last month, and even after being called lots of times during my adult life, for the first time I actually made it into a courtroom. Heck, not only did I make it into the courtroom, I was in the first dozen randomly picked to go sit in the jury box. And from what little we were told about the case, I knew that getting dismissed just wasn’t going to happen (I didn’t have any extenuating circumstances that would make either attorney want to get rid of me, in other words). So I was all set to finally get to serve on a jury. There’s probably never a really convenient time for this sort of thing, but the trial was going to be fairly short, and we’d get Fridays off, and I ws really starting to look forward to it…and then on the second day of jury selection, just as the judge was about to swear us all in, it turned out someone had overheard people talking about the case. And based on that, the entire jury pool (not just the 12 of us in the box) was dismissed. Ah well.

Aside from that little bit of excitement, however, things have been plugging along just about like they’ve always been. I’ve been busy with rehearsals for Vox Musica, and with knitting, and with cooking (still giddy about my new kitchen). We bought ourselves a Wii, and a few weeks after that, bought ourselves Wiifit, and then a few weeks after *that* we bought Outdoor Adventure Challenge, so we’ve both been working up a sweat, and also demonstrating just how truly uncoordinated we are, using our shiny new toy ever since.

The cabinet guy came by today and replaced the broken hinge on the flip-out underneath the sink, and attached the faux panel above the fridge. There’s still an issue with the fridge itself – it’s ever so slightly off balance, and I guess there was some confusion or miscommunication between the cabinet guy and the contractor over who was going to handle that, so the fridge remains about an inch out from its cabinet until that’s been resolved. But otherwise, the kitchen is finally DONE.

It is hard, I admit, to look at it now, and remember the hideousness that we used to have, so before you go any further, please, refresh your memory

Yes. It really was that bad. The good news is that, after 3 1/2 months, all that is no more. Here is the finished kitchen, in all it’s lovely glory.

This is a view from the dining room. It was hard to get a good representation of color from this angle because there’s a lot of sun coming in from the window over the sink (I have plans of knitting a lace curtain for that window at some point, however, which will help).

Next up, a view toward the back part of the kitchen. See above explanation for why the fridge isn’t flush with its cabinet. This picture is the best representation of the wall color, which turned out better than we could have hoped. I adore that blue – it just makes me happy every time I walk into the kitchen (well, okay, that and the fact that there isn’t a single bit of crumbling black grout in sight).

And finally, a shot of the area with the microwave and oven. The cabinet on the right is currently completely empty because I am not entirely sure what to put in it. We will not speak of the two huge drawers beside the stove that are also still empty, nor of the still-empty shelves in the cabinets overhead.

We put up one more set of big shelves in the pantry, plus a little gadget that hangs on the wall and corrals all the mops and brooms and such, and so now there is plenty of space for all of my canning stuff, and all of the cleaning robots (Richard thinks this means we should refer to the pantry as the “servants’ quarters” – heh), and all manner of other stuff that needed places to live, with several shelves still empty and waiting, should we happen to need them.

As I type this, there is a turkey spaghetti pie in the oven, which Richard and I just put together. After chopping the onion and bell pepper into the ground turkey simmering on the stove, I slice and wrapped one loaf of the pumpkin oatmeal bread I baked this afternoon (the second loaf has been stashed in the freezer for another day). This morning I made pumpkin scones and we ate them for breakfast (and, actually, for lunch), slathered with the pumpkin butter I canned last fall. In between breaks for knitting and reading, I used up the rest of the can of pumpkin I’d opened for the scones and added it to a batch of bran apple muffins that are studded with chopped dates – those are also stashed away in the freezer now, in a bag right on top of several dozen leftover chocolate peanut butter oatmeal cookies from Friday.

Last night we sat down with various cookbooks and recipes I’ve been printing out from various sources online, and we wrote up a menu for the week, and this morning, after breakfast, we headed off to the Farmer’s Market, where we filled two canvas sacks with fresh corn on the cob, onions, potatoes, bell peppers. I spotted one booth with concord grapes and snatched up a massive pile of them, since they’re one of the few fruits I actually like. Richard picked up a trio of kiwis and some plums. Everywhere we looked there were boxes overflowing with huge yellow and white peaches, so naturally four of those had to come home with us, and at some point either tonight or over the next few days, I’ll peel them and pit them and turn them into a crisp or a cobbler or something equally delicious.

It is so wonderful to have a functional kitchen again. I have my baking corner all set up, and I’ve used the dough hook on the KitchenAid Mixer more in the past week or so than I have ever used it in the entire time I’ve had that appliance. For the first time in my adult life I am blessed with an abundance of counter space. Despite the fact that there are several dozen jars of jam still sitting on the kitchen island, waiting to be washed and labeled and stored away, there is still always plenty of room for me to drag out bowls and containers and pots and pans and cook something. And it’s not just counter space that’s a novelty, it’s space in general. Tonight, making dinner together, there was ample space for both of us to move around, without bumping into each other, or corners, or appliances. In fact, there is not only enough room for the two of us, there is also plenty of room, on the other side of the island, for the cats to sprawl on the floor and watch us while we’re working, without us ever having to worry about stepping on paws or tails.

Timing is everything.

First, you have to (finally) have a working kitchen, with enough counter space and working burners.

Second, you have to have a whole bunch of free time.

Third, you have to have fruit.

When we put in all those tomato plants this spring, I had dreams of harvesting great mounds of fresh tomatoes, and putting up my own sauce with what we grew in our tiny little garden. That, however, never came to pass, as the regular tomato plants stubbornly decided that growing actual, edible tomatoes was just not something they were interested in doing. So much for that little fantasy.

However, last week two members of my Thursday night knitting group sent out an urgent plea. They were being inundated by plums. Did anyone want any?

I did not waste a second. There was a three-day weekend coming up. The kitchen is now (99%) done. And I have been in *such* a mood to can.

So that is how I ended up with nearly an entire paper ream box full of sugar plums (in case you were wondering, that is a LOT of sugar plums). And this is how I spent a majority of the last three days.

That is three dozen jars of jam – one dozen of plain and two dozen of spiced (recipe is here). Richard had to go out and track down jars for me, twice (and apparently I was not the only one with a yen to do a little bit of canning this weekend, because every place we went was nearly, or completely, out of them), and also more sugar. Jam takes a whole lot of sugar. Richard also very nicely cleaned up the entire jar of jam I managed to spill all over the floor and the counter, because I could not do it because that was the *first* jar I had poured and I had an entire pot of jam that needed to be poured into jars ASAP. In case you were wondering, one eight-ounce jar of extremely hot jam can cover a very large area of floor, and cabinets, and also feet (ow).

The spiced jam is our favorite, and the only reason the first dozen jars were plain was because I hadn’t decided to try the spiced variation yet. With each batch I poured the leftover dribs and drabs into a small glass and stashed that in the fridge, and we’ve been eating that over cheese blintzes for breakfast. Delicious!

Ladies and gentlemen, we have backsplash tile!

Here are some close-ups:

At this point, only a few minor details left (broken hinge, one additional faux panel above the fridge). We keep walking into the kitchen and gazing in awe. This was *so* worth it.