"Outside a dog a book is man's best friend, inside a dog it is too dark to read!" -Groucho Marx========="The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid." -Jane Austen========="I don’t believe in the kind of magic in my books. But I do believe something very magical can happen when you read a good book."-JK Rowling========"I spend a lot of time reading." -Bill Gates=========“Ahhh. Bed, book, kitten, sandwich. All one needed in life, really.” -Jacqueline Kelly=========

Sunday, July 16, 2023

Sunday Salon: The Berry Edition

The family outside the Paramount: Six--The Musical. Fun day!


Weather: Cooler with a wind announcing a change from the hot temperatures we've had the past few days. Tomorrow it is supposed to be quite a bit cooler with possible rain. That will be nice.


Berries galore: Saturday my hubby, daughter, and I headed out to the local farmer's market in hopes of finding berries and cherries. We live in berry country with strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, boysenberries, and later in the summer, blackberries all available and they all grow here nicely. But one has to be prepared to pounce. When they are ready, they are ready and the seasons are short. We nearly got caught off guard by the lateness of the strawberry season but we remembered to check in time. Whew.

On our trek to the farmer's market we hoped we would find raspberries for freezer jam, and cherries (I know, cherries aren't berries) for homemade pie filling. We were in luck. We got three half-flats of raspberries (18 pints), three pints of boysenberries (if you've never had them, they are wonderful) and three pints of blueberries. We found the cherries at our local grocery store and purchased 4 1/2 pounds of Bings (the dark purple ones.) We scurried home and got to work. While Carly started mixing up batches of low-sugar freezer raspberry jam, I started pitting the cherries to make the pie filling to freeze so we can make cherry pies for Thanksgiving dinner in November. The kitchen looked like a murder scene with red cherry juice droplets everywhere that looked like blood. Ha! At this point my hubby went to work. We call him Kitchen FEMA. While we make messes, he cleans up in our wake. Altogether we ---
  • Made three batches of raspberry jam ready for the freezer (14 jars)
  • Squished up the fruit for one more batch to be made some time in the future, bagged it up for the freezer.
  • Pitted all the cherries and made two batches of pie filling to freeze.
  • Made one batch of boysenberry pie filling to freeze.
  • Made a family favorite dessert for after dinner: Peach-a-berry cobbler, with extra cherries and boysenberries thrown in from the extra pie filling batches.
  • Washed all the blueberries and bagged them up to freeze.
  • Divvied up the extra raspberries so we could all have berries with our breakfast cereal.
  • Whew! I had no idea when I got up on Saturday morning that my day would be spent in the kitchen frantically dealing with wonderful berries before they spoiled. 
  • 🫐🍓🍒🫐🍓🍒🫐🍓🍒🫐🍓🍒🫐🍓🍒🫐🍓🍒🫐🍓🍒🫐🍓🍒
Six: The Musical -- We just got back from Seattle where we attended a matinee showing of Six: The Musical -- the story of Henry VIII's six wives. If you don't know the premise -- each wife gets a chance to make the case why she deserves to be crowned the wife who suffered the most. Each of the six sing in different musical styles in "queenspirations" by current female musical artists. The energy in the room and strong the feminist message really surprised me. See it if you get a chance!
From the program -- Catherine of Aragon, the first wife. Her queenspirations: Beyonce and Shakira

Fireworks collage: I forgot to share this collage last week. I took all these fabulous photos while watching the 4th of July fireworks over Lake Union in Seattle...only thing, I was watching the show on TV! Ha!
Books/Reading/Blogging:
  • Completed this week
    • The Last Thing He Told Me by Laura Dave. A Mystery/thriller. I understand it has already been serialized on Apple TV. Now I will look for it.
    • In the Great Green Room: The Brilliant and Bold Life of Margaret Wise Brown by Amy Gary. A biography of the author of Goodnight Moon.
  • Currently reading
    • Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. I thought I knew the story but I guess I know the story of Young Frankenstein by Mel Brooks. Ha! 60%.
    • Victory City by Salmon Rushdie. Don and I are listening to this fantasy creation story on audiobook. 30%.
  • Blog posts (hyperlinked):
Look what I found this week to amuse/amaze you:

1. The 2023 Finnish Hobbyhorse Championship, including Dressage. If you don't have Twitter I don't think you can see this, but it is real and I think, funny.  (But on the other hand, at least these people are getting exercise and doing something, not sitting around.)

2. This: Hoist the Colors by VoicePlay. Listen long enough to hear the incredible bass voice of Geoff Castellucci. I just discovered this a cappella group this week, though they've been around for years. Enjoy!


3.


-Anne
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