I spent the morning puttering around home, then picked up youngest grandson from pre-school at 11. We met a friend for lunch - and now I think I might as well just put away all those size 3T winter clothes I put in his closet the other day and dig out the 4T tub!! Between 11 am and when I took him home at 5:30, the boy ate 2 plates of Chinese food, a bowl of mandarin oranges, 2 scoops of ice cream, a snack package of cheese/bread sticks, a large apple with a big scoop of peanut butter, 2 glasses of chocolate milk, a bowl of cereal and another snack package of cheese/bread sticks. You just watch that boy go and have a growth spurt - the day after I ordered him a thermal swimsuit!!
While we were in town, I picked up 10# of butter on sale for $1.99/1 lb box. I vacuum sealed them when we got home and they are residing the freezer. I also picked up a dozen grapefruit at 39 cents each. First, I scrubbed them, removed some thin strips of the outer peel and put the strips in boiling water for a bit, ran a few more over the grater to make zest, then sliced them in half and used one my Mama's good silver grapefruit spoons to scoop out the sections. I had some with my lunch, packed some in wide mouth 8 oz canning jars to take in my work lunches the next two days, and froze the rest in 3 - 1/2 pint jelly jars. The strips of peel were taken out of the boiling water and any white inner peel was removed; then I gently simmered them in a 1-1 sugar water mix to make candied grapefruit peel. I think they'll need another trip or two through the simmering sugar water (they are drying right now), then I'll toss them in sugar and seal them up for sweetening and flavoring cups of tea this winter (or just for a quick nibble - Mama used to make candied orange and grapefruit peel every winter; it was such a yummy treat!). I'm waiting for oranges to show up at a reasonable price before I start making candied orange peel.
Just got all that finished up and watched out the window as a truck came down the road and pulled into the grassy edge of the field across from us. Now, mind you - we had two inches of rain the other day, and there are still big puddles in the road... Needless to say, he got stuck. Twice. Managed to rock himself out the first time; the second time I stuffed the boy in his coat (orange - his favorite color!) and put on my blaze orange sweatshirt and walked across the road. I didn't feel like getting the tractor out and he had a long snatch strap, so I backed the truck up to the edge of the road, then hopped out to discover that Hubby had taken the hitch out of the receiver. Mutter, mutter, grumble, grumble.... so I moved the hitch from my van over to the truck, and we got him pulled out. I had him help me push my bigger trailer over into the grass, and pointed out a place he could park on us; then texted my cousins to let them know there would be someone parked by the shed tomorrow when they got here to deer hunt, and that my spot in the driveway would be free if they needed it as I had to work the next two days...
A friend with a horrible cold called to ask me if I had any lemons or frozen lemonade; she wanted to make hot lemon 'tea' to help sooth her throat; so on the way to take the boy home, I took over several packets of 'True Lemon' and she texted back later that it was wonderful! I need to remember to pick up a few more boxes and vac seal the packets. The True Orange and True Lime packets are good too - the orange is especially nice to add to tea along with some cinnamon, but you don't want to add too much to a pot of tea or it will overwhelm the tea itself.
Here in a few minutes, I need to finish up some laundry and make sure all my work stuff is ready to go - we'll be moving into the newly completed area of our unit that has been under construction for the past 7 months - it will be nice not to be so cramped!! The best part is that we'll have a locker room again
It's a weird work stretch - work Thu/Fri, off Sat, work Sun/Mon, off Tue, work Wed, off Thu/Fri, work Sat/Sun - someone snuck an extra day in there on me and I'm hoping it was a mistake because otherwise I'm likely to be pretty crabby by the time I'm done. I don't mind overtime if I volunteer for it, but I'm not too enamored with the idea of it while I'm fighting this blasted cold - especially since I got called at 5 am both days I was off this week and ended up taking call for 8 hours yesterday (weak moment - I gotta stop having those
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You folks all take care out there - and have a great rest of the week!!