#GRATEFULVIBES - ATTITUDE OF GRATITUDE/WEEKLY THOUGHTS - 30 OCT 2023 - 12 NOV 2023

Good morning, Steemians! 😊 Hive-ians! 😊

I’m not sure how it happened, but I missed last weeks post…Okay, I know how it happened, life got super busy, that’s how it happened. I was over at a friends helping her process a whack load of apples. It took us a whole day to peel and slice the apples, soak them in lemon juice (to keep them from going brown), and can them all up. In the end it was worth all the effort because we ended up with a total of 20 pints of apple pie filling…that’s enough for at least 10 pies; maybe more, depending on the size; plus, there was a bit leftover for some apple turnovers, YAY! 😊

I spent part of another day, slicing and dehydrating Hungarian Wax peppers. 😊

I also processed the red peppers off our Christmas Tree pepper plant…I know that’s not its actual name, but I can’t remember what the plants called, but it looks like little Christmas lights, so we’ve been calling them Christmas Tree peppers. 😊

Our handsome grand-puppy Shadow giving me his best, “What, you aren’t coming with me?” look as he walks around the side yard. 😊

I can’t believe I used up all the brown sugar that I’m making in this picture, (…baking takes a lot of brown sugar…I’m just saying, and I’ll have to make more today or tomorrow, depending on how long it takes me to finish cooking down our tomatoes.) This, is the first stage, adding the molasses 😊

We like our brown sugar a nice medium dark brown and after just a few minutes of mixing, here it is, all done. 😊

What was left over after baking that same day. 😊

I canned some more potatoes this week. 😊

I made a batch of homemade tortillas this week, they didn’t last and that’s another thing I’ve got to make more of. 😊

Chicken fajita fixings. 😊

Filling trays with carrots to go into the dehydrator for our winter soups, stews, and chili’s. 😊

We did an experiment to see if we preferred dry or wet packed potatoes and the dry packed potatoes won, so from now on, that’s how we’ll be canning our potatoes. I also tried canning diced tomatoes and they turned out pretty good, so that’s something we’ll be able to do more of next harvest season. 😊

Some potatoes and carrots in the dehydrator. 😊

Some of our canned potatoes with our barbecue chicken sandwich made a nice quick supper for us. 😊

I bet you can guess what else I started to process this week…if you said pumpkins, you’re right! I’ve only processed two so far. My handsome husband isn’t a fan of them so that means lots of seeds for me and the dogs to enjoy. 😊

Here they are at the dry before seasoning and roasting stage. 🧲

This them at the seasoning stage. 😊

Almost ready. 😊

I’m not sure it’s worth labeling them as they won’t last long after I start eating them, but I can just reuse the same jar for each batch of pumpkin seeds I make…there should be quite a few as there are over 30 pumpkins still to be processed. God gave us a lot of pumpkins and squash this year, along with a few melons that we were able to share. 😊

Soon this thin skiff of ice will become a solid mass…winter is here, sigh. Oh well, maybe it’ll go by as quickly as the rest of the year, that would be nice. 😊

I’ve been cooking down tomatoes for about a week now; (this was the first pot before it went through the food mill,) and still haven’t finished, but I’m working on it. 😊

I need to make room in my freezer, so all these have to get cooked down, along with their friends in the basement. 😊

I’ve cooked all the bags of tomatoes, put them all through the food mill, and now its just a matter of cooking them down to the consistency we like our sauce to be. After that we can officially say we’ve processed over 100 pounds of tomatoes and then there’s canning it all left. I can see the end of the tunnel. YAY, LOL! 😊

Our handsome grand-puppy Tiny has finished inspecting and marking the fresh snow and is heading back in. 😊

One of four pots going on the stove to cook down tomato sauce. 😊

We really wished our Victorio 200 food mill had a splash guard while we were using her, but alas, there wasn’t one with it and we will have to scrub down everything in our kitchen once we’re done this project. It’s amazing/impressive how far tomato juice can fly out of it. 😊

I realized that I need to invest in a much larger pot(s) for next years harvest, to make my life easier, but for this year, I filled my biggest pots and just started cooking sauce down. 😊

A friend of mine came over and brought her roaster for me to use, to help speed along the cook down of the frozen tomatoes. 😊

While she was visiting, I threw a couple batches of cookies; (cranberry/raisin/oatmeal on top and oatmeal/chocolate chip/coconut on the bottom,) in the Vortex Plus to bake. 😊

I had to add a third pot for cooking down the sauce. 😊

Some of our meat order arrived. 😊

Tallow, now that’s another new thing for us this year, we’ve never thought of asking for it before, doh. 😊

I should have the tomato sauce all cooked down today or tomorrow. I’m looking forward to having it all canned up and safely stored in the basement. It’ll be nice to know we’ve it down there and won’t have to rely on the grocery store. 😊

There were five chickens playing up on that hay bale, but two got down just as I got the camera to focus. 😊

More snow coming in. 😊

Well, that was how things have been going for us here. I hope you have all been safe and healthy and have had an amazing week! I’m grateful to God for blessing us with another week to share with you here. 😊 God bless you all. 😊 Have an awesome week everyone! 😊

Anyone else interested in a badge like this? Contact @daddykirbs for a custom badge of your own. 😊 Thank you to @zainenn for the GHSC footer as well. 😊

(All photos taken by me or for me by my handsome husband on my Huawei P30 Lite or Samsung S20FE5G.) (https://frostyamber.picfair.com is the address for my Picfair site if anyone’s interested in checking it out.)