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All right, now for some more stories... During our move to Arizona, we packed up everything that we thought we should move (rather then it sit in a moving truck for a month) and brought it with us in our vehicles. Part of the junk that came with us was our perishables. Some of that was yeast. As it turns out, it ended up sitting in the bronco for a week while we stayed at Karren's house prior to us moving into our place in Benson. Well that practically killed our yeast. It also altered our cooking with the yeast as we kept adding more and more yeast to make the bread do something. Well we have replaced our yeast (finally admitting that it was dead) and now we need to adjust down our amount of yeast. This is some bread rising in the front seat of the van for about 1 hour to rise. Well rise it did, and then some. This is the yellow bowl that we have (complements of Karren) but you can't tell it due to the risen bread dough. The rolls did turn out after we reshaped it... |
| The bronco has been making a clunking noise coming from the front end suspension system. It only happens when you go over a bump and also seems to only be on the driver's side of the car, so with that I took the vehicle and raised it then checked the tire. It had a little bit of a wiggle to it, so I decided that it was time to replace the wheel bearing. Of course everyone locally doesn't have the parts required for such a job, so off to Tucson I went. AJ was out and helped pull it apart, but we didn't have the right tool to get out the spanner nut that holds in the bearing. So, again off to Tucson to get the right tool. |  |
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It wasn't as hard as I thought that it would be, but during the assembly process I needed to apply 50 ft-lbs of torque to the bearing spanner nut to seat the bearing, and my torque wrench is a 3/8" drive and the socket was a 1/2" drive. Of course I didn't have an adapter that would go between the two sizes, and of course everyone in town was closed by the time that I realized this, so the car had to sit halfway in/halfway out of the garage for the night, until something opened up the next day so that I could finish the job. AJ went home and missed the second part of the adventure, but Ethen helped out. It seems to work fine, other than the odd clunking sound is still present. You got to love automobiles. I also replaced the fuel pump (again another classic story, but AJ and Brittnay haven't shared their photos, so it will have to either come from them or wait - I guess it will have to wait either way...) |
| Terra found a great deal in Walmart for peaches. She decided that she couldn't pass up the wonderful price of $0.70/lb so she bought a few pounds and commenced in the bottling process. After she finished the bottling, we have learned a few things: First - Certain kinds of peaches like to be bottled and others fight you. These fought the process. Next time we will purchase some Freestone peaches. (those are the ones that we ended up with from Utah during one of the successive bike trips). Second - peaches go on sale for $0.49/lb and we didn't wait long enough to catch the sale (we are still used to what they went for in Arkansas. When we purchased them Mylinda was here and also thought they were a good deal). and Third - when Mia gave us some peaches when we lived in Taylor they looked like this and we always thought Mia didn't know how to bottle peaches. As it turns out she also purchased (or otherwise obtained) non-freestone peaches and also fought the process. We always thought we were better at bottling them than her, as it turns out, we happened to start with a bottling peach as opposed to a warrior peach. |  |
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After recovering from the peach ordeal, we went out to the garden and were greeted with copious amounts of cucumbers. So once again we tried our hand at the bottling process. We ended up with 6 quarts of cucumbers and one of jalapeños. First off canning these things is easy, but I don't think we did something right. We put in the dill, but they now sit in a clear liquid and didn't turn green. I don't know if we need to let them sit for a while before we get the classic green color, or if we messed it up as well. We will have to wait and see. We also used the same liquid to can some jalapeños. Not because we wanted pickled peppers, but because they were starting to go bad in the fridge and we have lots more in the garden. We need to figure out what to do with them, and no, my name isn't Peter Piper... |
| Well, after everyone came out for Sunday dinner (and we made salsa from the garden) I went out with the kids to see what we could find in the garden. And holy cow - the jalapeños were turning ripe with aggression. We ended up piking 197 peppers, so now if you can think of any thing to do with them, we are open to suggestions. I don't want them to go bad, but what do you do with that many jalapeños? Why didn't we plant any green chilies???? In all fairness seven of the cucumbers we picked last time we were in the garden, but they made the picture look better - but since AJ only looks at the pictures he will never know. Now we once again need to make some more pickles. We are even eating the cucumbers bathed in vinegar with dinner and we still can't seem to decrease the number in the fridge.
In case you haven't heard, everyone was out due to the fact that I was put in as a councilor in the bishopric. I don't know if they were out to celebrate, congratulate, or offer condolences. I guess any excuse is a good excuse for a party with chips and salsa - particularly if the salsa is fresh. |
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We haven't tried the watermelon, but plan to do so for breakfast in the morning. It is currently in the fridge getting cold (you can't eat warm watermelon). I am very hopeful that it will taste good. According to the scale in the bathroom it weighed in at 20.4 pounds (± .5 lb - the scale is 0-300 lb). This is the first time that we really have had success with a watermelon, but I guess I shouldn't say anything seeing how we haven't tasted it yet. I hope it tastes good, particularly since we have about 5 others getting close to ready to eat! |