Our Winter Stores

Here I am again, with my thanks to those of you who have checked in over the past few months. It's been a bit of a rough road balancing the two jobs, losing our long-time pup, and battling pneumonia for 6 weeks. There was a myriad of other sore luck, including losing our hard drive along with the past four months of pictures we'd taken. That included a much fuller picture than the one in this post, showing off our winter stores. At this time last year I was pining for having put up more local foods. This year we remembered, and were good little squirrels. We have strawberries in the freezer still, (my dream of our own strawberries in November and December oats has come true), jams from our strawberries and currants, salsa verde from our early tomatoes and peppers, diced tomatoes and sauce from our garden bounties, and applesauce from local orchards. The pickled peppers came from my sister's garden--we canned them together at our grandmother's house. (That was an adventure--believe the part of the recipe that tells you to wear gloves. I'm just sayin'.) We had our own garden peas for dinner tonight, and there's at least one more dinner of those, and also in the freezer we have double the tomatoes pictured. We've supplemented here and there with store-bought sauce and jelly, but I think we should move comfortably into the next harvest season. Supplementing this are the local pumpkins, squash, potatoes, onions, carrots and beets (some from our own garden) that we remembered to stock up on this year. We have certainly learned a lot and come a long way since committing to eating as local and organic as possible.

Looking back at my goals for this year, I can say that I've come closer to meeting them. I wasn't perfect, but I made improvements here and there--I'm moving in the right direction. Our holiday gifts this year will consist of (hey family, skip the rest of this paragraph!) a sampling of our preserves and photo gifts of the kids. We worked hard all summer to make that happen. (If you are doing your own gift shopping, feel free to check out my Guilt-Free Shopping Guide from last year.)

I admit my shortcomings and I can assure you I won't be posting a lot in the next few weeks. Enjoy my posts from last year if you so wish. Much of this month will be reliving the same joys. This year we've adopted a local family to give them a special holiday, which will make our own twice as helpful. Tis the season of giving, and I feel blessed knowing that my blog readers will be taking that to heart, and spreading their good will to all in their own communities. Happy Holidays to all of you, and best wishes for the new year.