Final Days Of Summer

It's fall already, and it's felt like fall for awhile, given the lack of oppressive heat that summer usually brings us and all the back to school business. But these last few days of summer have brought out the inner squirrel in me. Last weekend, I decided I needed to do something to mark the end of the season so Mom and I put up a bunch of pints of Jason's mom's pepper sauce. This may or may not be the fabled sauce of Miss Dixie, Jason's childhood neighbor, I suspect it is, since it has more of her hallmarks than Kathy's, in any case, it is a delicious sauce. This isn't something I do every year, but I really love the taste of it on beans (black eyed peas, pintos, butter beans, and the like), and the recipe is easy (well, I have to use gloves for the hot peppers, but other than that it's easy) and putting up a dozen pints really doesn't take that much time, especially when Mom is is there to lead my through it.

I had plenty of tomatoes left over (since I lost my battle with the evil squirrels, I had to buy a peck at the farmer's market and we only used half for the pepper sauce). And I was desperately in need of another can of olive oil, so the logical thing was to pick some at Viviano's along with some buffalo mozzarella and make a big sloppy caprice salad. I love so many things about Viviano's. The price of olive oil is astronomical (I can remember when it was about $12-$15 for a 3L can not that long ago), I was
dithering between a new can that they had predominately displayed for about 5$ less than my normal Celio brand. In the checkout I point to the new brand and ask "Am I going to be happy with this?" The two people behind the counter (one has been working there for more years than I've been coming to the store) say without hesitation, in unison and with a tone that is definitive: "no", I scoot out and exchange it for the Celio and the long standing employee looks at me with approval and tells me that's what she always uses. I exit Viviano's looking forward to my salad and the hunk of Marconi's bakery bread. We are not a white bread family. I mean that literally. We don't eat white bread usually - lots of rye and whole wheat and I'm constantly guilt tripping myself over the fact that we eat too much of the processed sandwich bread that has all that corn syrup in it. But, occasionally, I like a crusty Italian style loaf and Marconi's is always perfect. We scarfed it down with the salad and then the next morning I ate it with the last of the gooseberry preserves from Sunflower Savannah a vendor at the Tower Grove Farmer's Market. I had bought this earlier this summer and I'm completely enthralled with it. We had gooseberry bushes when I was a kid and while I remember there being lots of gooseberry pie (I wasn't fond of it, but my grandparent's generation was), I have no memories of jam that tasted like this! And the color is really pretty too. Here's a picture:
I'm sorry I haven't done as much canning as I would have liked this year. It's hard to do with Nora in the house, unless there's a team looking after her, and really I always think it's going to be more labor intensive than it is.

This weekend I also got around to testing the alternative to rice crispy treats in Vegan Lunchbox. While Nora has no problems eating marshmallows and I can make them with Earth Balance instead of butter, there are a couple of people in our orbit who don't eat them due to the gelatin in marshmallows, including Jason. So I thought I'd give these a try since they use corn syrup & peanut butter (I subbed soynut butter) instead. I make the jumped up version with chocolate chips. Once I got over that these were not rice crispy treats, I actually liked them and Jason and Nora gave them two thumbs up too. Nora has taken to calling these "Snack". They are way sweet (they are after all listed in the dessert section) and they tasted quite a bit like store bought quaker granola bars as well as a treat Mom made for us when we were kids - Special K bars. The soynut butter/chocolate combo is a real winner and I like the crispiness of the rice crispies. I think I will make them again and add oats as well and try to find the brown puffed rice that the recipe originally suggested.

Finally here are the lunchboxes from this week so far:This is my lunch from Monday, Jason had a similar one, but I didn't get a photo: blackeyed peas with tomatoes and spinach (Sunday's leftovers), turkey sausage (Jason had the last of the cornbread muffins instead), a pluot, and we both had a side of Snack. I also sampled one of Nora's Vanilla Silk pouches and it was actually good (I'm not a huge fan of the regular Silk, but I find the Chocolate quite tolerable as well). Here's Nora's lunch from today:
Macaroni and meat sauce, carrot sticks and zuchini stars and hearts with hummus dip, a pack of raisins, and Vanilla Silk pouch. I'm suffering from some guilt because I forgot to include my usually notes in her lunch.

That's all for today, but I did want to remind folks about the Strange Folk Festival this weekend. Go check it out!