Pumpkin!

Remember the Bag Lady mentioning her big pumpkin? Well, she finally got around to doing something with it this weekend. First, out of curiosity, she weighed it. It was a whopping 14 pounds.

Here it is, beside a can of pie filling:

She cut it in half:



Scooped out the seeds (which she rinsed to get rid of the membrane, then set aside to roast later)


She cut it into smaller pieces, then boiled it to soften the rind (she also put half of it in a roaster with some water and cooked it in the oven for the same results)


She peeled it and cut it into chunks.

She sprayed the seeds with olive oil, sprinkled them with sea salt and roasted them in the oven:


Then she whipped up a pie:


Yum

She still has a huge amount of pumpkin, which she will use to make Hot & Spicy Pumpkin Chutney. But she has to stop at the grocery store on her way home from work this afternoon because she needs some hot peppers for the chutney.

Wild Friday

Where the heck did this week go?

The Bag Lady finally got around to downloading the pictures from her camera that she has taken over the course of the last couple of weeks, and decided to share this one with you:



This was taken a couple of weeks ago (she thinks it was a couple weeks - the days all run one into the next and her life is a blur....) The snow has melted off the trees, but there is still snow on the ground.

She has been sewing a lot, but hasn't taken pictures of anything she made, and most of it is gone now to it's new owners. She is also hard at work knitting her scarf. It will soon be long enough to show up in a picture!

She had an eye examination yesterday, and her prescription has changed a little bit - enough to warrant new contact lenses. The lens in her left eye now corrects her astigmatism, and she is pleased to report that she can see quite a bit better. She thinks it will take a few days to get accustomed to the new lens, though, because it is thicker than the old one was.

(OMG, the Bag Lady really has nothing to say when she is reduced to discussing her new contact lenses. She needs to do something wild and crazy so she can post something exciting!!)

She just realized that it's Friday the 13th! That'll make life interesting for the superstitious types!

Happy weekend, all of you!

We Shall Always Remember

The Bag Lady has been attempting to write a post about Remembrance Day. She recently found her father's medals and wanted to share a picture of them with you, but is still having computer trouble and cannot get pictures to load properly. Sigh. In the meantime, here is a link to her post from last year for those of you who missed it.

She hopes that everyone will take the time to observe two minutes of silence at 11 am to remember the men and women who have given their lives in the service of their countries. Two minutes seems hardly long enough to show our respect and appreciation for these brave men and women.

(She held her breath and tried one.last.time! and it worked! Here are her dad's medals for service in the Second World War.)

Edited to add.... upon further inspection, the Bag Lady now thinks that the pin on the left in the photo is not from her dad's military service. The bronze coloured star is the Atlantic Star (he was in the navy, and served in the Atlantic Theatre), the medal next to it is for voluntary service. The third medal on the bar is a mystery. The medal on the far right is a commemorative medal, dated 1952 - 1977.
(the small medals at the bottom are replicas of the larger ones)

Doing Nothing

The Bag Lady had a minor collapse last evening. She decided she wasn't going to DO anything. She had worked hard at her job, then had to run a lot of errands in town, so she was tired and wasn't going to do ANYthing. That is, until she remembered the yarn she purchased.....

She sat on the couch and started knitting a scarf. The yarn is of the variegated variety (snicker) so it will be white and green and blue and light blue. It is actually making quite a pretty pattern as she goes along. She knit whilst watching a little television (something that she does very rarely) and she caught the last half of NCIS, which she quite enjoyed. She knit until her hand seized up and told her she wouldn't be able to move it if she didn't stop soon.

She had planned on taking a hot bath and going to bed early, but that fell through during the zoned out knitting episode. She figures, at the rate she knits, this scarf will be done somewhere around June (hopefully, she won't NEED it in June, but in these parts, one can never tell!)

She still hasn't had time to download any pictures from her camera, but hopes to get around to that sometime soon. (It's been so long since she downloaded it, she isn't even sure what's on it now!) She will try to remember to take a picture of the pumpkin that she is planning to decimate soon, too.

She is still having trouble trying to upload pictures to her blog, though, so it may be awhile until she can resume sharing photos with you.

Monday, Already?

Oh my gosh, how did it get to be Monday?

The Bag Lady has been getting caught up on some of her housework and sewing, as well as working, and hasn't had anything interesting much to blog about.

Enough of her tomatoes were finally ripe to do something with, so she processed them. She ended up with 14 cups of tomatoes, which she cooked with some onions and garlic and spices and canned. She ended up with 6 jars of lovely sauce that she can use for spaghetti sauce. Added to some scramble-fried (homegrown) ground beef, it will make a lovely meal!

The Rancher has gone back to work for a little while. He has been working night shift, so the Bag Lady has been tiptoeing around (when she hasn't been at work during the day) and has resumed feeding the cows.

She has a large pumpkin that her sister-in-law gave her that she will soon turn into pie filling. She sees a lot of pumpkin pies in the future!

And she's off to work in a little while, so will have to sign off for now.

Have a great day!

Excuses

The Bag Lady has been busy with all kinds of things in real life, and just wanted to stop in and say hello. She was going to post some pictures for you, but her computer is in a snit and won't cooperate. So after she takes it out behind the woodshed and gives it a "good talking to" with a willow switch, she hopes to have something for you tomorrow.

In the meantime, she hopes everyone is doing well.

Random Babble

The Bag Lady is having difficulty adjusting to the time change! Believe it or not, the change back to standard time causes her more trouble than losing an hour in the spring. She gets up early as a rule anyway, so losing the hour in the spring doesn't really bother her. It just means that other people are getting up closer to the time she is awake. But gaining the hour in the fall? Instead of getting up at 5:30 in the morning, this morning she was awake at 4:30. Sigh.

She still seems to be busy with all manner of sewing, and trying in vain to keep ahead of the dust bunnies (which are rapidly growing into dust elephants) and housework. The Rancher has taken over the care and feeding of the cows, which is a good thing because the Bag Lady doesn't seem able to manage her time very well. He has also been pitching in with some of the kitchen duties, for which the Bag Lady is grateful.

She got an email from a friend with more pictures of the People of WalMart. What the heck goes through some people's minds when they get dressed to go out in public? Do they REALLY think they look good when they are wearing clothes that look like sausage casings? It made the Bag Lady sad. (It also reminded her to check her image in the mirror from ALL directions before venturing out into the world!) She can still remember the care and attention to detail her mother took before she went out. She would even have us make sure there were no stray hairs on her shoulders and back from combing her hair. That wouldn't even cross the minds of some of the folks in the pictures! (And if the Bag Lady knew how, she would share some of the pictures with you, but she doesn't, which, on second thought is probably a good thing.....)

It is apparently winter in the Bag Lady's neck of the woods. It snowed almost 8 inches on the weekend, and although some of it has melted, a lot of it is still hanging around. The Bag Lady is resigned to the fact that she probably won't see the grass until some time in March or April. Some of the trees and bushes were caught unawares, too, and still have leaves on them. It looks a little strange to see the rose bush with all it's (admittedly brown) leaves against a backdrop of snow.

So what's happening in your life?