Another Hazy July Day at The Lake - Summer 2007

Word of the Day

Circumvaculate - To remain stationary while vacuuming in a circle around oneself.

Today is one of those days when I realize that I'll need to blog early or not at all. HTP and I are going to drive to The Big City today for a family (HTP's side of the family) dinner. With the three hour drive to The Big City and the three hour drive home from The Big City and maybe a couple of hours visiting...maybe three...I figure that by the time we get home, it'll be tomorrow.

MC Daughter is going to come home with us. She wants to spend some time up here. D Buddy will join her here this weekend. I wonder if they know that 44th Annual BlueGill Festival is this weekend? The BlueGill Festival is a four day event...not counting the medallion hunt. There will be the softball tournament, water wars, a kids' carnival, a beer garden, two street dances with live bands, pony rides, the horseshoe tournament, a parade, and a fish fry. Our little town is The BlueGill Capital of Wisconsin and this weekend EVERYONE is going to be crowding the town.

I picked, cleaned and crushed what ended up as 3 1/2 cups of wild raspberries yesterday. MC Daughter promises that she'll join me in the hunt tomorrow. She wants me to show her how to make jam. For some reason or other, she's never been around when I've made jam....or for that matter, she's never been around when I've done any canning. Whether or not this was done by design at the time I have no idea. It didn't bother me because I'm a kitchen hog. Too many people in one kitchen can drive me a bit crazy, especially if they don't know what they're doing. Making jam isn't all that hard but if I had to chase after young kids while hot jam is bubbling on the stove, the task would be a lot more challenging. I think HTP would whisk the kids off to safety whenever I made jam. Good plan. MC Daughter is a lot older now and I'm sure she won't tip a pot of hot jam over onto herself. She is a professional. It should be interesting to see how her professional training bumps up against my own "passed down through the generations" training.

I think I'd better clean the berries all by myself. *sigh* But, I suppose I should at least show her the ropes and what to look for when cleaning raspberries. MC Daughter might not understand that you can't wash wild raspberries. (Heck! I don't even wash my tame raspberries since I never use any kind of insecticides on them.) However, the thought of all that protein crawling on her berries may cause her skin to crawl. One has to treat wild raspberries in much the same way as mushrooms. You carefully clean off any bits of protein (bugs and worms) and stems and such beforehand. Not all wild raspberries are buggy or wormy but some are so you have to check each tiny berry carefully. I can just see her tossing out any berry that has a worm or bug crawling on it with me exclaiming, "Honey, that berry is just fine...once you get rid of that teeny worm, that berry will taste just fine in jam." Looks aren't important when it comes to the berries one uses in jam. I wonder how many bugs and worms end up in Smucker's Jams? I don't know the percentage but I do know that there must be some because otherwise the Feds wouldn't give you a percentage that was allowable. *shudder* At least I know what does and does not go into my jam. I'll have to pick up some more sugar and some 1/2 pint jars on our way home from The Big City. We should have enough wild raspberries to make a couple of batches of jam.

Murphyism of the Day

Ryan's Application to Parkinson's Law

Possessions increase to fill the space available for their storage.

Noteworthy Quote of the Day

In an industrial society which confuses work and productivity, the necessity of producing has always been an enemy of the desire to create. -- Raoul Vaneigem