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| Photo by Lisa Nolan |
First item, the food dehydrator. I used one when I was a preschool teacher because we had several plum trees in the schoolyard. Oh, and a HUGE fig tree that the crows ate and #@!% purple all over. So we made fruit rolls. (That was a long, long time ago.)
I bought one to use at home this summer. My big idea for OUR plum tree was to make prunes. What I got instead were sour rocks. Make that VERY sour rocks, with pits.
Moving on to item two: For my son's birthday I got him a yogurt maker. (After all, I had one as a kid!)
So, yeah, um... Haven't used it yet. It's still sitting inside the box. But we will make yogurt... when the weather gets cold, rainy, and wet, and we are stuck inside. How hard can it be?
Third item: A well-used crock pot. What could go wrong with a slow cooker! Now THAT'S something I can make use out of!
I made awesome apple-pear sauce the other night! Then I saved all the peels to, you guessed it! (No, not to put in the food dehydrator!) To put in the crock pot! I added some cantaloupe and orange peels (bad idea). I slow-cooked them over night, and I made compost tea. (That means it was not fit for human consumption so I fed it to the worms and slugs in our compost.)
This next item kind-of sort-of doesn't count because we don't actually have it yet, BUT WE WILL! It's my gift to my husband for our tenth wedding anniversary. I'm ordering a waffle maker. We're gonna make Sunday morning waffles gosh dang it. Or should I say, HE is going to make waffles, it will be his after all! Then he can teach our son how to use it! And mom gets fresh, warm, soft, crunchy waffles on Sundays!
The juicer (my juicer) has been sitting on the kitchen counter unplugged for almost a year. Why you ask? We haven't had enough left-over fruits and veggies to juice because our food budget has been so FREAKING TIGHT!
But, and I'm excited to tell you this, giddy even, we now get our fruits and veggies delivered to us from our CSA farm just outside of town, a farm fresh to you farm (the name of the farm escapes me), and we also pick veggies on u-pick days at another farm outside of town AND (I'm bragging now) we go to the farm store. So we have produce coming out of our... juicer! Yeah! I juiced some apples, pears, kale, and broccoli leaves. Yum-my! Who cares if it was green!
Back to my list: An empty wine bottle. (We used to have several empty wine bottles, per week, and my husband does not drink, so...) I was a bit of a lush. But after years of trying I am no longer a wine-o!
So what's with the empty bottle of $3 White Zinfandel? It was our ten-year wedding anniversary and I drank some on our hot tub date!
I had a little left over wine and stuck it in the fridge, waited a day, then had one glass. No more, promise.
OK, only four more items to go (for those of you who are counting... like when you're waiting in the express checkout lane and counting the items in the person's cart in front of you).
An apple tree in the backyard that produces two apples a year.
A dwarf orange tree that produces zero oranges a year.
Strawberry plants that do FANTASTIC in my home-made cat litter planters. (Yes, I drilled holes in the bottom for you garden fanatics like my husband who can't get our fruit trees to produce fruit. "They will, honey! They will." They better. I need fruit for my yogurt make and juicer and crock pots and food dehydrator!)
And the last item on the list: my sorry-looking snowpea plants. (You thought I was going to say hot tub! No, sadly we don't have one.)
First of all, my pea plants got attacked by soldier snails.
Second, I did not replant them, so they did not grow very tall, more like bent over. Brown, bent-out-of-shape, with mini pods that still tasted great.
They would taste better with wine, though.
Next year? I am making mead with honey and plums!
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